A scrabble-tile poem.

Each tercet (three lines of iambic pentameter with ABA rhyme-scheme) in the poem below is formed from the set of 100 Scrabble tiles.

   Through sentient, gauzy flame I view life's dread,   d,e blank tiles
   quixotic, partial joke. We're vapour-born,
   by logic and emotion seen as dead.

   Plain cording weds great luxury ornate,              d,z blank tiles
   while moon-beams rise to die in Jove's quick day;
   I navigate the puzzle-board of fate.

   Wait! squeeze one hundred labels into jibes,         n,t blank tiles
   grip clay and ink to form your topic--rage;
   await the vexing mandate of our lives.

   I rush on, firm, to raid my aged tools,              m,s blank tiles
   but yet I touch an eerie, vain blank piece,
   as oxide grown among life's quartz-paved jewels.

   Once zealous Bartlebooth, a timid knave,             h,s blank tiles
   portrayed griefs clam upon a jigsaw round;
   yet now he lies, fixed quiet in his grave.

   Just so we daily beam our pain-vexed soul            h,n blank tiles
   with fiery craze to aim large, broken core
   and quest in vain to find the gaping hole.

Bartlebooth is the jigsaw-puzzling main character of Georges Perec's La Vie Mode D'emploi (Life, a User's Manual). Perec's novel consists of one hundred chapters with one blank (missing). Scrabble has 100 tiles with two blanks. The near-coincidence of ideas was the inspiration for this poem.

MICHAEL KEITH
Salem, Oregon