Black Villanelle

Your inner voice, insidiously whispering in your ear
As you stood there trembling, every limb was aching;
You, alone among the dead, struck dumb by fear.

No-one else followed the vision that brought you here:
A dying dream, it was your own heart mistaking
Your inner voice, insidiously whispering in your ear

At the darkening of the day, you sat down to peer
At the coming night and the last light forsaking
You, alone among the dead, struck dumb by fear.

Whatever sense there was, you could no longer hear
It in voices or in words or songs in the making,
Your inner voice, insidiously whispering in your ear

Was it memory, a misremembered dream, a mere
Pulse of anticipation, a shuddering in the bones, shaking
You, alone among the dead, struck dumb by fear?

Beached on barren sands, the retreating tide so near;
Time and all its oceans drown you as you're waking,
Your inner voice, insidiously whispering in your ear;
You, alone among the dead, struck dumb by fear.

© BH, 2018

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It was University Challenge first of all:  a recent question came up to which the answer was ‘villanelle’.

It’s a useful challenge in the business of word-smithery to find a new form or process in which to do it. So I looked into it. I found that Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night is one. Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song is another. The villanelle lends itself, I’m told, to rants and obsessively neurotic themes. It’s also used for more whimisical compositions.

I tried it with this, hopefully more in line with Thomas or Plath. Hence the title.  I had to read it over after it was done just to figure out what it means. I think it’s about being overwhelmed. I leave you to consider by exactly what.

If you’re curious, look up the villanelle, its rhyme scheme and other variations in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle