She prayed in the language I was taught to lose,soft in the kitchen, before the six o'clock news.I never learned the words, only the tune.
I told myself it was a fair thing to choose —one country's grammar for another's view.She prayed in the language I was taught to lose.
I catch it still in traffic, in the bluesa stranger hums that sounds like something true.I never learned the words, only the tune.
My daughter asks what god we don't refuse,and I have no verse to hand her, no clear cue.She prayed in the language I was taught to lose.
Maybe faith was never in the words I'd use,but in a woman certain no one knew.I never learned the words, only the tune.
So let this stand for what I could not choose:she prayed in the language I was taught to lose.I never learned the words, only the tune.
The poet asked for: My first villanelle. Be honest about the fourth stanza — I'm not sure the refrain is earning its keep by then.
About the villanelleA nineteen-line poem where two lines return again and again like a tide.
A villanelle has nineteen lines in six stanzas, and only two rhyme sounds. Its first and third lines come back as refrains, so the poem circles what it cannot stop thinking about, each return landing a little differently.
The shape Five tercets rhyming aba, then a quatrain rhyming abaa; line one and line three recur as refrains.
Listen for The same two lines coming back, meaning slightly changed by what surrounds them.
4 poems in this form →@nadia
Two languages, one notebook. Trusts the shorter poem.
11 poems · 9 readings received · 11 written · 2 followers
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