Baci n.08

I realized as I was setting down to write this morning, that I haven't actually talked a whole lot about the Sestina project in general.  The group as a whole is called the "Bacio Sestinas".  Baci is the Italian word for kiss, but Bacio is also a kind of chocolate truffle topped with a hazelnut, and back when I lived in Colorado, I worked at Between The Covers and we sold these candies. Inside the wrapper where these love quotes, and I sort of collected them and have been using them as the inspiration point for most of the sestinas in the collection.

On another point of interest, I was first introduced to the sestina via Neil Gaiman in one of his short story collections.  It is an old Italian form of poetry with a very specific pattern.  Generally, they are written in iambic pentameter, though I don't, but the important and interesting bit is that the follow is the repeating pattern of end words. It's a fun and challenging form that I enjoy.

In a continuation of last week's theme, may I present to you "Baci n.08"

Baci n. 08

"Passion colours everything it touches."

B. Gracián

Unloved, none perceived her as a beauty;

A face made unsightly by blemishes

And a figure that's not to current taste.

Were her eyes the wrong colour, the wrong shape?

Did her inner fire not burn as brightly?

Is the world really made to be so blind?

And was it the world that made her, too, blind.

Or popular perception of beauty

That dimmed a fire that should burn more brightly?

She sees but a collage of blemishes

And curses god and devil for her shape;

A beast of fetish, not a thing of taste.

Yet love bears to all a different taste

That ever sees that to which the world's blind

'Cause it is of unfamiliar shape.

True love composes for itself beauty

Where the world descries blemishes

In a person who would burn more brightly.

And so she will ever burn more brightly

When knows how false the world's ignoble taste

Which cannot see beyond her blemishes.

She by being loved, is not longer blind

And can see in herself lies a beauty

That is true beyond any concern for shape.

When she learns to love herself, her shape;

When passion's fire burns ever more brightly

Will recognize within her true beauty.

She looks and sees a world born without taste:

The loveless world no longer strikes her blind

For she perceives perfection's blemishes.

The popular sees only blemishes

Not the irony of its own sad shape,

Because vanity strikes its own self blind.

With this knowledge she will burn more brightly

Guiding the world to a true sense of taste

And a deeper knowledge of real beauty.

Perceive that beauty is false blemishes,

A tongue without taste; beast born without shape,

For when passion burns brightly, love is blind,