humor week 95, poetry form week 87, Villanelle

 

 

 Length: 19 lines
Stanzas: 5 tercets and a quatrain
Metrical requirements: none
Rhyme scheme: Too complicated to summarize

 

 

These components are arranged into the following:

A1BA2 / ABA1 / ABA2 / ABA1 / ABA2 / ABA1A2

 

 

One Art

 

Elizabeth Bishop - 1911-1979

 

 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.