Bank Holiday trifle

Villanelle – Soccer fan

No, look within, this is your darker state
Flagged by the scarf you wear so forwardly
A sentient step towards the insensate.

Having forsworn the gift of human freight
To co-exist, reflect, reach out, then see.
No, look within, this is your darker state.

Instead you urge yourself to harm and bate
The scarves outside your damned fraternity.
A sentient step towards the insensate.

Your sport’s an artificial form of hate
Whipped by the branches of your tribal tree
No, look within, this is your darker state.

For those whipped scarves you attribute their fate
To mythic signals from an enemy.
A sentient step towards the insensate.

But when the tumult clears, fears re-create
The prior world you left so eagerly,
A world away from this, your darker state,
The blinding darkness of the insensate.

NOTE. The villanelle is called a Poetic Trifle in Brewer’s “Art of versification” but it can rise to greater things. Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle…” is a villanelle. Nuff said.

The first and third lines from verse one are repeated throughout. So, fewer lines to write, I thought. It was only after the tenth re-write I dimly began to realise their potential.

This is a joint exercise with Plutarch. The first version, which I have retained, is terrible. Like Julia, Plutarch pointed the way to improvements and I stumbled on, ending up with what you can see. Interestingly both critics frequently drew my attention to defects which, in my heart of hearts, I knew were there and yet I pretended to be blind to. This is the essence of saying: you know you can do better. And this is the best form of encouragement. My gratitude to Plutarch here, and Julia earlier.

Adieu for a while.