Villanelle for Ragnarök
The villanelle is a fixed poetic form consisting of nineteen lines. There are five sets of three lines (tercets) ending with a quatrain. There is also a fixed line relationship. The first and third line are repeated and the poem ends with these two lines. The villanelle began as a rustic, pastoral song and dance of peasants and other “outsiders.” The most famous villanelle is Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night.” After nearly dying out, the villanelle has come back strongly and is popular among contemporary poets and lyricists. One of my favorites, is Frank Scott’s “Villanelle for Our Time,” made famous by Leonard Cohen [His YouTube version can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzvVOy0Dq8].
My “Villanelle for Ragnarök” is a response to a dream that I initially recorded as a poem I called, “Welcome and toast, $5.99 a cup.” This dream-poem has haunted me as it points to a “final” Ragnarök, an image that becomes more and more compelling each day. Here is the dream-poem.
Welcome and toast, $5.99 a cup
The setting:
An anywhere, everywhere
living room middle crust
at best or no crust at all
The characters:
Strangers all, but known
to me; everyone friendly
not a party, but festal still
The hostess:
Black-gowned but all
eyes on the black earthen
cups, squatting on her tray
The drink:
Black too, Blavod it is
libation for night's time
black clay holding black
The toast
She says it costs $5.99
a cup for this final toast
just drink up and welcome
Ragnarök
The dream tells me that the drink is Blavod. I did not consciously know this name, but in researching it, I discovered that it is black vodka—a triple distilled vodka infused with Catechu, an extract from the heartwood of Burmese catechu acacia trees. In legend, the acacia is associated with a number of Ragnarökean events, such as Noah’s Ark built from acacia wood as the world was engulfed in deluge. In a number of traditions, the acacia plays a crucial role in prophecy. It is often the wood of the “secret of secrets,” hence its use to construct the Ark of the Covenant. The burning bush from which God spoke to Moses, was acacia. So, in toasting the final Ragnarök, drinking vodka infused with burnt acacia feels apposite.
More recently, as part of immersing myself in Ragnarökean reflections, words came and formed themselves in lines and I saw that it was becoming a villanelle. I completed this in what I’ll call a Ragnarökean mood—a mood becoming more common. I may set this to a background beat and give it voice. Here are the words.
Villanelle for Ragnarök
Toasting Ragnarök
Facing full on the ending
Join in or sleepwalk
This is the last shock
We know not what is coming
Toasting Ragnarök
Time has left the clock
Raise your glass, join the singing
Join in or sleepwalk
You miss the sweet talk
That covered over everything
Toasting Ragnarök
No time left to mock
Those who called for the seeing
Join in or sleepwalk
Do you hear the knock?
The Coming Guest is asking
Toasting Ragnarök
Join in or sleepwalk
Resonating to Ragnarök
As I cast about for resonance to your Ragnarök dream,
I am reminded of a black-light beacon shimmering
In the dark.
Or of heat-waves bending space.
Or does your dream, perhaps, resonate with the
Long undulations of sub-sonic Rayleigh waves,
The ones that the elephants on the beach felt in Indonesia in 2004,
The night before the tsunami hit the next morning?
The chained elephants stamped and screamed,
Trumpeting into the night, frantic to escape to
Higher ground, to run to the mountains,
Before the cataclysm overcame them.
When the wave hit, mid-morning, and those humans who could—
Not carried away in the massive surge—
Ran inland, racing for the trees,
Snakes and spiders had already crawled and slithered
Into the tree-cover ahead of them, ahead of us—
The top evolutionary predators, the Big Kahunas,
Homo sapiens.
How is it that the elephants and monkeys, snakes and spiders,
Whom we supposedly outsmarted, knew before we did
That The Wave was coming?