Sestina for the Imp
I no longer doubt, sweetheart, that the world
is ruled by a frolicsome metaphysical imp
in so many subtle guises, you cannot tell
whether it were your will or a mere accident,
or twist of circumstance, or ghostly chance,
by which something or other consequential was accomplished.
You know only years after—by then perfectly accomplished—
what the chicken pox that quarantined my world
had sprung through days of solitude: a lifetime chance,
my studious blood meeting up with the fever of Imp
where a low-grade passion burned in the accident
of enforced silence and burst its blisters for a secret to tell.
What of times past and deep hungers I couldn’t tell—
other ruins of heart’s lusts that had been accomplished,
or fêtes of appetite that relentless urged the accident—
O, no clear design, only those necessities of a self’s world
constantly reshaped by underground spirit of Imp
casting dice at leering specters of chance.
I might have been elsewhere lost, for such the chance
that winds the time humming and drumming to tell
of flights and embraces—spindrift and daze of Imp—
by which all feasts and fatalities of desire are accomplished;
such, sweetheart, its turns and twists to unfix our world
and move its dreamt future to startle of accident.
You will in any event deny purpose in accident,
there only purrs in one’s course the engine of chance
preparing either rout or routine through our world
is then opened or abruptly closed, to tell
of a truth or delusion already accomplished
long before it were ever possible to trip the Imp.
Surprise! Even you, sweetheart, are the same Imp,
in your person the sweetheart to my pox, by accident—
of speech or gesture showing the thing accomplished,
time’s most intimate disclosure, not strumpet of chance.
How shall fingers work the abacus of desire to tell
the stark consummate underlay of your world?
I have no skill to collect the grains of accident,
or subvert chance’s ploys, or distract my special Imp;
only our netherworlds meet but cannot tell the fait accompli.
I no longer doubt, sweetheart, that the world
is ruled by a frolicsome metaphysical imp
in so many subtle guises, you cannot tell
whether it were your will or a mere accident,
or twist of circumstance, or ghostly chance,
by which something or other consequential was accomplished.
You know only years after—by then perfectly accomplished—
what the chicken pox that quarantined my world
had sprung through days of solitude: a lifetime chance,
my studious blood meeting up with the fever of Imp
where a low-grade passion burned in the accident
of enforced silence and burst its blisters for a secret to tell.
What of times past and deep hungers I couldn’t tell—
other ruins of heart’s lusts that had been accomplished,
or fêtes of appetite that relentless urged the accident—
O, no clear design, only those necessities of a self’s world
constantly reshaped by underground spirit of Imp
casting dice at leering specters of chance.
I might have been elsewhere lost, for such the chance
that winds the time humming and drumming to tell
of flights and embraces—spindrift and daze of Imp—
by which all feasts and fatalities of desire are accomplished;
such, sweetheart, its turns and twists to unfix our world
and move its dreamt future to startle of accident.
You will in any event deny purpose in accident,
there only purrs in one’s course the engine of chance
preparing either rout or routine through our world
is then opened or abruptly closed, to tell
of a truth or delusion already accomplished
long before it were ever possible to trip the Imp.
Surprise! Even you, sweetheart, are the same Imp,
in your person the sweetheart to my pox, by accident—
of speech or gesture showing the thing accomplished,
time’s most intimate disclosure, not strumpet of chance.
How shall fingers work the abacus of desire to tell
the stark consummate underlay of your world?
I have no skill to collect the grains of accident,
or subvert chance’s ploys, or distract my special Imp;
only our netherworlds meet but cannot tell the fait accompli.
(from In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics, 1973-2003, UP Press, 2004)
Melissa Nolledo: Burst Watercolor Series II
(background dropped out)
(background dropped out)
