Joe Dolce: ‘Villanelle of the Stairs’, ‘The Tyger’ and ‘The Fading Art of Read’

Villanelle of the Stairs
after Dylan Thomas

Move surefooted, beloved, through the tears,
the couplet is a sonnet’s final grace,
climb fiercely into those high elder years.

One-by-one bid adieu to stubborn peers,
the dimming echoes of that youthful race,
move surefooted, beloved, through the tears.

Your children, old; your grandchildren, so fair,
exalting beauty that you touched in place,
climb fiercely into those high elder years.

Photographs in frames are Autumn mirrors,
the Now and Here becomes your mind’s embrace,
move surefooted, beloved, through the tears.

Fond memories shuffling far and near,
the warm familiar smile gone without trace,
climb fiercely into those high elder years.

I’ll walk beside you on the narrow stairs,
but if I fall, or fail to keep the pace,
move surefooted, beloved, through the tears,
climb fiercely into those high elder years.

Joe Dolce

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, striped and lean,
Marsupial thylacine,
What immortal mind might think,
To make one such as you extinct?

Blame the bounties, blame the dogs,
Blame the sawn and rolling logs,
Blame disease, the human slur,
No one really knows for sure.

Some say the last one of its kin,
Went by the name of Benjamin.
No proof or records of that tale:
The photographs suggest female.

In what bush, in what brush,
In what dry Eucalyptus,
Nocturnal hunter, quiet and shy,
Hid thy graceful symmetry?

Tyger Tyger, striped and lean,
Marsupial thylacine,
Did we glimpse thee on that track?
Perhaps a clone will bring you back.

Joe Dolce

The Fading Art of Read

Cheating bonfires,
citizens, in Fahrenheit 451,
devoted entire lives
to memorizing a single novel—
each person becoming a book.

Fundamentalists, after sufficient head-banging,
can recite the Koran by rote,
but who else in the 21st century
has time for the World’s Literature?

Short attention spans, six-second sound bytes,
memory atrophied by hard-drives,
hardly able to recall where we left keys,
the names of people just met,
our own phone numbers,
we stick post-its, set alarms,
write in birthday books,
personal organizers,
flip recipe cards.

Like Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron,
television, infested with commercials,
gongs our concentration,
dystopian shocks,
by a Handicapper General.
We watch films of books,
actors reciting our bedtime tales for us.

We can teach ourselves to read again,
but where to begin?

Short stories and poetry
can serve as quick bright flares
illuminating overgrown paths back
to our grand neglected Library.

Joe Dolce