Unmasked: A Sestina

I have written a great deal of poetry and even published a collection titled A Greater Sound By Far. Until now, however, I had never attempted a sestina. Here is my first crack at this complicated form, which requires 39 lines, seven stanzas, and the regular repetition of words in a specified pattern.

Creation burst into being with a crack
that soundly split in tenuous two the mask
that once the universe concealed,
and from this fracture fraught with fire rose
the whirling worlds, and a certain three
orbs: moon, sun, and earth the last.

On that earth, he who was least and last
among his brothers endured the cruel crack
of the whip, the word, and the wind; these three
curses chased him when he rose
and when he rested, but the mask
he wore upon his woes all marks concealed.

Yet also in his beaten breast hungry hope concealed
itself, languishing in its secret lair, until one day at last
it gasped and groped and grabbing rungs rose
to climb and peek with cautious eyes from out the crack
of the man's disguise and saw how others also mask
the pain, the anger, and the hate - these three -

hidden from oppressors' view - these three -
lay in souls too numerous to count, concealed.
Strive though they might, such men could not mask
rebellion's seeds and hide them to the last.
Their stoic shells must sometime cave and crack.
Revolt in wondrous waves of ruin rose,

spreading across once still streets it rose;
in tides of terror one, two, three
miles wide, it wound its way to crack
open the castle gates where cowered concealed
the masters of the world, the very last
to see the shedding of the victim's mask.

Nor could those masters anymore mask
That pearl - the precious priceless rose
they had sought to guard until the last:
their power. The cold clock struck three,
and the stones of destruction drifted down, concealed
the toppled tyrants, above them leaving not one crack.

At next day's dawn, the last molten mask
beneath a crack of lightening with a stormy wind rose
over whip, word, and wind - and concealed all three.

For another of my poems on AC, click here.