What price the truth, is truth now dead
that leaders spout – thoughtlessly said
unfiltered guff from mouths uncouth
distract the people – the poorly led
from what’s the real that will be rued
is truth now dead, what price the truth…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to write a “Sparrowlet” an invented stanzaic form created by Kathrine Sparrow.
A stanza of 6 lines – any number of stanzas permitted
8 syllables per line
end rhyme scheme BbabaA (often written in iambic tetrameter.)
L1 and L6 of each stanza is written in 2 hemistichs i.e the line split in two, with commas
The 2 halves of L1 are inverted but repeated exactly as a refrain in L6.
For example:
L1 In winter’s cold, as moonlight beams
L6 as moonlight beams, in winter’s cold.
N.B. The 2 halves of L1 contain and set the a and b rhymes thus:
RRRA, RRRB
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
RRRB, RRRA