The Road We Are Walking: A Villanelle

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"The Road We are Walking"

 

It's so bleak, the road we're walking.
Dare we not accept the light?
Can no one see our hearts breaking?

Is our world slowly darkening?
Why not touch the strings of white?
It's so bleak, the road we're walking.

The state of our society, it's sickening.
Have we entered the blight?
No wonder our hearts are breaking.

The world right now is maddening,
I can no longer stand the sight.
It's so bleak the road we're walking.

On truth's side, we should be leaning,
yet most of us dare not do what is right.
No wonder our hearts are breaking.

How could we not give our lives some meaning?
Why are we so afraid to fight?
How bleak is the road we are walking...
When will our hearts stop breaking?

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What is a Villanelle?

 

A villanelle (also known as villanesque) is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.

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