According to an Australian website called Suzie's Sanctuary, a triolet is an eight line poem or stanza with a set rhyme scheme. Line four and line seven are the same as line one, and line eight is the same as line two. The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB.
line 1 - A
line 2 - B
line 3 - a
line 4 - A (line 1)
line 5 - a
line 6 - b
line 7 - A (line 1)
line 8 - B (line 2)
Triolet
What is a nice day?
Have you seen any lately?
November is gray.
What is a nice day?
When will pink winds play?
Why must clouds loom irately?
What is a nice day?
Have you seen any lately?
Triolet
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray.
My heart has need of its white breath
To sanctify each empty day.
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray
And let its hoary petals play
Day’s hollow chancels to sweet death.
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray.
My heart has need of its white breath.
Evelyn Coffey
"Let its hoary petals play day's hollow chancels to sweet death"
ReplyDeleteThe chancel is the space around the altar of a church.
Evelyn loved flowers, loved their visual beauty and their smell. I think lines 5 and 6 pour out her desire that her own emptiness, despite its holiness, be filled by the scent of the flower.
Breath, stolen from her sister and her mother while she retained her own, occurs again and again in her poetry as something entering her from outside herself, bringing life into hers.