Villanelle for Minnie Imber, by Hank Kalet

Here is a revision of a first villanelle, the French form that had been used primarily for bawdy lyrics but that had been made famous as a more solemn poetic structure by Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop. This particular villanelle has undergone significant revision -- this is the 11th version of the poem.

VILLANELLE FOR MINNIE IMBER
for my grandmother, 1905-1986

By Hank Kalet

She leaves the house, wanders the city
alone on a grid with now unfamiliar lines,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

lost in headlights, streetlamps, whir of packed jitneys
that run down a street she’d walked so many times.
She leaves the house, wanders a city

of chattered English now foreign as she
fades back to girl’s shtetl Yiddish, her mind
splicing frames out of sequence, without clarity,

calling to long-dead mother, vacant and empty
in the cold dead space behind her eyes.
As she leaves home, wanders alone in the city,

damned by grainy scenes to obscurity,
decades of images, cutting from shot to shot,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

as the film reel flickers, snaps, is spliced, turns gritty,
frame by frame, leaning into the stuttering light.
She leaves the house, wanders alone in the city,
unmoored mind drifting, lacking of clarity.