Paradelle* for Stevie Nicks
Give me around. Take your leather from me;
give me around. Take your leather from me,
lace my heart and stop my dragging.
Lace my heart and stop my dragging.
Give me your leather, take from me my lace
and stop dragging my heart around.
And when a bell rings its thunder-like raining,
and when a bell rings its thunder, like raining,
the night only happens through Rhiannon.
The night only happens through Rhiannon.
Thunder only happens when it's raining
and Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night.
And you go, left by the wind like a memory is.
And you go, left by the wind like a memory is:
a strand that for all days is in the now,
a strand that for all days is in the now.
The days go by like a strand in the wind
and a memory is all that is left for you now.
Stop, Rhiannon. Take the days in me. Give
my leather a go. Left is when it's raining,
for the night is a bell and rings from all the thunder,
like me. And you wind through my heart
like a lace strand now, and that only happens
by dragging your memory around.
*The paradelle was invented by Billy Collins as a parody of French fixed forms in particular and to mock formalism in general.
The paradelle is (in Collins' own tongue-in-cheek footnote) "one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words."
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradelle
