Villanelle #1: Three Sisters

Three sisters walk beneath the summer moon.
The cloth of existence they spin and weave.
The span of life is ended far too soon.

Clotho spins the morning thread, her boon
The breath, the blood, the sap of trees and leaves.
Three sisters walk beneath the summer moon.

Lachesis, matron of the world at noon,
Measures each strand by the length of her sleeves.
The span of life is ended far too soon.

At dusk do the shears of Atropos prune
That which was given from each is bereaved
Three sisters walk beneath the summer moon.

Mourners moan, orphans wail, and widows swoon
Toppled titans lie in forests aggrieved
The span of life is ended far too soon.

Ah, Fates! Your voices! What is it you croon?
Has my own skein spanned Lachesis's sleeve?
Three sisters walk beneath the summer moon.
The span of life is ended far too soon.


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Note on the form: The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.