Litany Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDBEFGFBHICB JBIKLBC MNFOP M BFQRBSB SBSSBSJ| This is a litany of lost things | A |
| a canon of possessions dispossessed | B |
| a photograph an old address a key | C |
| It is a list of words to memorize | D |
| or to forget of amo amas amat | B |
| the conjugations of a dead tongue | E |
| in which the final sentence has been spoken | F |
| This is the liturgy of rain | G |
| falling on mountain field and ocean | F |
| indifferent anonymous complete | B |
| of water infinitesimally slow | H |
| sifting through rock pooling in darkness | I |
| gathering in springs then rising without our agency | C |
| only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew | B |
| - | |
| This is a prayer to unbelief | J |
| to candles guttering and darkness undivided | B |
| to incense drifting into emptiness | I |
| It is the smile of a stone Madonna | K |
| and the silent fury of the consecrated wine | L |
| a benediction on the death of a young god | B |
| brave and beautiful rotting on a tree | C |
| - | |
| This is a litany to earth and ashes | M |
| to the dust of roads and vacant rooms | N |
| to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun | F |
| settling indifferently on books and beds | O |
| This is a prayer to praise what we become | P |
| 'Dust thou art to dust thou shalt return ' | - |
| Savor its taste the bitterness of earth and ashes | M |
| - | |
| This is a prayer inchoate and unfinished | B |
| for you my love my loss my lesion | F |
| a rosary of words to count out time's | Q |
| illusions all the minutes hours days | R |
| the calendar compounds as if the past | B |
| existed somewhere like an inheritance | S |
| still waiting to be claimed | B |
| - | |
| Until at last it is our litany mon vieux | S |
| my reader my voyeur as if the mist | B |
| steaming from the gorge this pure paradox | S |
| the shattered river rising as it falls | S |
| splintering the light swirling it skyward | B |
| neither transparent nor opaque but luminous | S |
| even as it vanishes were not our life | J |
Dana Gioia
(1)
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