A “trenta-sei” is a poetic form established by the American poet and translator John Ciardi (1916–1986). Taking its title from the Italian word for the number 36, the form consists of six six-line stanzas, rhymed ababcc. Each of the later lines in the first stanza becomes the first line of a later stanza: Line 2 is thus also line 7, line 3 is also line 13, etc. Here, for example, from 1986, is Ciardi’s “A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in the Early Death of Keats.”

What Ciardi had in mind, no doubt, is the Italian form of the sestina. Another poetic form with six six-line stanzas (plus a concluding three-line envoi), the sestina is a difficult and tight form, with the last word of each stanza repeating as the end word of the first line of the next stanza — all while the words at the end of the first stanza’s first five lines appear in a regular pattern at the ends of other lines in the other stanzas.

It’s a difficult form to import into English (here’s Ezra Pound’s attempt, and here’s Elizabeth Bishop’s). Ciardi’s trenta-sei version eases the burden on the English poet — while keeping enough of the repetition that gives this kind of poetry its strange power. Its strange sense of song, for that matter. In today’s Poem of the Day, the Sun’s associate poetry editor, Sally Thomas (b. 1964), looks at the trenta-sei form and sees, in its claim of unity in disjointedness, the dreamlike quality that song sometimes has.

“Let’s start walking past the end,” Ms. Thomas writes, and as often in her poetry, the sense of passing time bites into the poet’s otherwise cheerful view of the world. (See, for example, other works of hers that have appeared as the Sun’s Poem of the Day: “Hindsight” and “Hawks in Holy Week”). The poem concludes, “Shadows, like the hills, are blue. / Yesterday lies where it fell. / Somewhere the last tram rings its bell.”

The Bell
by Sally Thomas

Today is here. Tomorrow’s there.
Yesterday lies where it fell.
Time’s a line that points to where
We go. The last tram rings its bell.
Where tracks run into grass, descend.
Let’s start walking past the end.

Yesterday lies where it fell
When our mothers called us in.
Water’s greening down the well.
Droning houseflies live in sin.
Our dogs broke loose and ran away.
Nothing that we love can stay.

Time’s a line that points to where
We’re going. Can you read the map?
Cicada songs abrade the air
All afternoon. You need a nap?
Pull down your hat to shade your eyes
And try to think of lullabies.

We go — the last tram rings its bell —
Along the blinding boulevard.
Yesterday lies where it fell.
Tomorrow’s sunning in the yard.
Poplars waver in the dust.
Summers fly where summers must.

Where tracks run into grass, descend.
Run barefoot through the shivering green.
Where are we? Don’t you know? Pretend
That we were born here. Hills, unseen,
Stand tall and blue behind a cloud.
Late cicadas cry aloud.

Let’s start walking past the end
Of everything we ever knew.
Let evening take us by the hand.
Shadows, like the hills, are blue.
Yesterday lies where it fell.
Somewhere the last tram rings its bell.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.