Wendy Webb

NARCISSUS OF GRASMERE (twin sestina)

I cannot think of anything to write
and soon I will be getting in a state
of such undress that I won't dare go out,
until I've done my knitting - made it all -
to this fine pattern's balance and design.
A straitjacket at this time of night? Oh, no!

And now I've got a headache, for I know
that now I cannot sleep until I write
an absolute phantasmical design,
to Goth me to the graveyard in a state.
So when I go to bed, the creaking hall
will keep me tossing, turning all albout

my bed, a couch potato, or a lout,
as duvet drifts - to fall - like freezing snow.
This is my Scrooge in chains: I will see all
before brain cells can rest and know all's right
with the whole world and with my mental state.
As if a poet brain's a flawed design,

to aim for full perfection of design,
while partners flick the switch and turn lights out
before the need to rage into this state.
They simply need to rest and so say, No.
What is that demon, or that deadly sprite?
I think he will creak later in the hall.

No modern poet needs to write it all,
for every wit or poem or design
has been recorded in its nacred rite
beneath a sun or moon to open out;
until the scallop shell's revealed. We know
the purest Botticelli's virgin state.

I fear to palindrome this pure estate;
to tart The Birth of Venus for them all.
Perhaps, after a sleep, I will then know
the life she lived? What painter could design
his blissful Venus: middle-aged and stout.
She should die young, to paint perfection's rite.

I know that I will sleep in blissful state,
so right will dream the ending of it all.
For this design will fold - like sheep - about...


My brain's resigned to counting them all out,
though morning's bright, befuddled, held in thrall
to snowed up sleep and headache's mean estate.

Fair Venus dreamed me large through ageing's right,
until a Botticelli laughed it out:
how his sweet darling wandered, by design,
to search the wide earth; find her Eros, know
her Psyche loved by man - not one, but all -
until her lovely body's pregnant state

fled, like her infant Joy, to heaven's estate.
Then all her nacred shell, spread wide. We know
that teenage brides will live to scream and shout,
face credit crunch, inflation, spreading right
to loss of Paradise (by male design);
for Milton saw the core of Eve's fast fall

when she gazed in the stream and saw it all:
the beauty of the female form, so right.
And then she gazed on Adam. Now we know
just Michelangelo could contemplate
such beauty in the male (not yet grown stout).
So Venus saw her feminine design

and wandered all of earth to redesign
the jar or potion: keeping her estate
forever fair and worth true love by right;
until she came to England's garden. All
the clouds and mountains moved, like falling snow
in her reflected beauty; all about.

Then Wordsworth stamped her image, wore her out
with tourist sites she hoped would never spoil.
She sat beside that pool (its breezeless state):
and gazed upon the scallop shell's design.
The splashing seagull barely paused her rite
to gaze and gaze forever and we know

her breasts and curves and hills and dells; yet no
Narcissus will look far for male design,
when she can play with flowers, birds and all
that ageless female beauty all around.
So Venus aged into the sweetest state
and lived forever in men's eyes - by right.