Below are two more villanelles from Preston Keido Houser. A villanelle is a fixed-form poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain which follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds. It originated as a form of ballad and took its name from a 1606 poem by Jean Passarat, coming into fashion in the nineteenth century. As can be seen from the poems below, the first and third lines are repeated in the subsequent verses, coming together at the end with added significance.

Coming closer towards stifling straits
Humanity oscillates behind sterile walls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

The earth at the mercy of teutonic plates
Hope resonates as the sky faintly falls
Coming closer towards stifling straits 

Pollution, radiation, population—none abates
Hubris exacerbates diplomatic brawls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

No romance but calculated measures and weights
Science extrapolates as exuberance stalls
Coming closer towards stifling straits

Doomed demand less from elitist debates
Devotee advocates calm while Darwin calls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

Amid a diaspora of decimated states 
Compassion creates as the heart crawls
Coming closer towards stifling straits
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace
Enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

Energetic normalcy that prompted the modern to chase
After treasure now demands an end to ravenous rapport
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace

Since mercenary machines have become the master race
Perverted polis transformed to an automated killing floor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

A weary world must needs resist the temptation to retrace
The patterns that generated an egregious esprit de corps
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace

No return required to a socially toxic interface
But fare forward away from a system the majority abhor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

Predestination and promised contagion keep apace
Adherence to a phony fate too ignoble to ignore
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place


NB How to Read a Villanelle
Like Japanese haiku, a villanelle is instantly recognizable by its verse form: five tercets followed by a concluding quatrain.  While the metric line is not fixed, the rhyme scheme and refraining lines are established. Traditionally, themes are external and obsessive, meaning that the poet tends to concentrate on a single social theme and uses the refrains to underscore the thematic inferences, in this case responses to the COVID 19 virus. Since villanelle topics tend to be non-psychological, the writer avoids personal pronouns (although pronouns are often implied as in Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”). Spiritual content may be present but the social and political focus tends to occupy the foreground of the poem, the spiritual consigned to the background. Again, like haiku, the villanelle poet is likely to present, say, 70% of the topic, allowing the reader to fill in the lacunae, make the connections, and bring the poem to conclusion.

Twenty Villanelles by Preston Keido Houser is available in print and kindle versions at amazon.com. (For those in Japan both versions are available here.) For a previous villanelle by Preston, see here. For a selection of four poems here. For his witty Zen limericks, click here and here. For an improv poem, see here.