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Saturn

“When we have shuffled off this mortal coil” —Shakespeare

“According to medieval thought, the worst planet was Saturn, 
sponsor of death, destruction, darkness, and disaster.” —Michael Ward

When Saturn and his choking rings complete their toils,
Malign, diseased senescence, smirking au revoir,
Are we to shortly shuffle off these mortal coils?

The wheel of time implodes, its clockwork spring uncoils.
The immanentized eschaton begins in war
As Saturn and his choking rings complete their toils.

Catastrophe by day, the deadly plague despoils
The hale, diffusing stillness through the grim bazaar.
Are we to shortly shuffle off these mortal coils?

Perusing the night sky, the muted crowd recoils
At dreaded signs they see projected from afar
Where Saturn and his choking rings complete their toils.

Unsaturated colors, moonlit paths through soils
Where shades of gray are bleeding shades of cinnabar.
Are we to shortly shuffle off these mortal coils?

The black swan thunders, raised by blackened aerofoils,
And all the lesser lights free-falling star by star.
When Saturn and his choking rings complete their toils
Are we to shortly shuffle off these mortal coils?

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Alan Orsborn lives in Washington state.

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14 Responses

  1. Margaret Coats

    Scary scenario, Alan. Your word choices are sometimes ancient and sometimes contemporary, and the drama is built on classic recognition of Saturn as the old god whose time and cosmic order disappeared as another came into being. You don’t say whether the “muted crowd” is medieval or modern, which allows us to imagine apocalypse-fearers in the past, or artificial intelligence-fearers in the present. Good technique to arouse anyone’s apprehesions, and the repetitions of the villanelle form support them.

    Reply
    • Alan Orsborn

      Thank-you Margaret. Agreed, it’s scary, it’s thought provoking. I’m not sure I could even say I like it, it’s more like I hold it in respect or even dread. As you noted the villanelle structure reinforces the dark themes as ancient and modern align in the eschaton.

      Reply
  2. James A. Tweedie

    Mythology tells us that Saturn/Kronus (the Titan) ate his own children to secure his rule (after castrating You Uranus with his scythe). Kinda creepy like Jeff’s villanelle. His last son, Zeus, survived and supplanted his father who then regurgitated the children he had eaten all of whom were now fully restored and joined Zeus as the Gods of Olympus. Strange that the mythology also credits Saturn’s rule as being a golden age of bliss for humanity—an Edenic world undone by the Olympians.

    I hope that Jeff’s Saturn doesn’t return to devour the world and us along with it!

    Reply
    • Alan Orsborn

      That was possible because Saturn swallowed his children whole, and did not chew them. Abominable table manners, but it saved their lives. So they say.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Saturn’s rule was not a golden age for humanity, because human beings were not created until Saturn was overthrown and Zeus and the Olympians became the rulers of the universe. Male human beings were created by the Titan Prometheus as a way to annoy Zeus, while female human beings were created by Zeus and the Olympian gods as way to bring trouble to mortal men.

      Reply
      • Alan Orsborn

        Hopefully Saturn will not be making a comeback anytime soon.

        Thank you for commenting.

    • Alan Orsborn

      Thanks Allegra. I am working on something that is less scary.

      Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    This is a brilliant villanelle in several ways. I love the insightful combination of the two epigraphs and the way you work their themes together. The rhymes are very original, and the vocabulary far from pedestrian. The imagery — especially of time’s clockwork’s spring uncoiling, and shades of gray bleeding shades of cinnabar (I actually had to look up that word) — is excellent.

    Reply
    • Alan Orsborn

      Thank you, Cynthia. I suppose we owe our word choices to many things. In this particular case my wife is a painter of icons, and icon painters have used cinnabar as a pigment to in egg tempera. As you undoubtedly found, it’s a mercury compound, quite toxic.

      I had to look up epigraph, it seemed vaguely familiar. There is a third one I could have used, simply Gustav Holst’s Saturn Bringer of Old Age from his Planets cycle. That comes out as the malign senescence.

      I was with poem as a woman is with child. There was something here that seemed to be important. If it is a warning, I hope and pray we can avoid catastrophe.

      Reply
  5. C.B. Anderson

    This is a very complicated, highly image-laden poem, Alan, and I am surprised that Saturn has such a long rap-sheet. Even my grandmother knew enough to tell me, “Always chew your food.” I would always rather have a good bone-chill than an innocuous mind-fluff.

    Reply
    • Alan Orsborn

      Very thoughtful compliments. As far as complicated and image laden, I actually needed quite a lot of help from my editor to make this poem accessible, less opaque. The collaboration resulted in a much better poem than otherwise, actually, it resulted in a publishable poem. Thank you C.B., and thank you, Evan.

      Reply
  6. Alan Orsborn

    Thank you everyone, for your kind comments on this my first poem published on The Society. I could not have ever believed in the existence of a space like this on the internet, I thought everything had already gone too far south in Western culture. But by happenstance, by some quirk, I discovered at the penultimate moment of 2023, so many kindred spirits.

    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters.

    Reply
  7. Adam Sedia

    I absolutely love this piece! First, I have a soft spot for villanelles. They really test the poet. It’s a hard form to pull off well, and you’ve done a magnificent job. The poem is packed with vivid images, which makes it exciting and engaging, but even more I enjoy how a form that originated as a pastoral love song can sound so cataclysmic. Here the repetition resembles that of a pantoum: dour and foreboding. You use an astrological allusion to make what I think is an apt description of our times. This was a pleasure to read and ponder.

    Reply

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