From dictionary.com:

A sestina is a verse form first used by the Provençal troubadours, consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in varied order as end words in the other stanzas and also recur in the envoy.

About a month ago I was piqued by the desire to try my hand at one. I finished it this morning:

Like alchemists, we purged with quicksilver our gold
and prayed aloud the amalgam would be no loss
as we had few techniques for cleansing mercury
cared not enough for dread, indirection or dirt
to well enough ply ourselves from dross-ridden lead
at the last our base metals were leeched but by chance.

Droplets doubled over in fever’s given chance
elbows, knees, and shoulders wrapped in shadows of gold
and to which weaknesses of this agelessness lead,
to arms of words spanning the tongue, bounding a loss.
Another febrous moment fails; tools fall to the dirt;
dander saving for us dropped and sweating mercury.

All change was at our fingers, swift-footed Mercury
salesman, saint of cunning and commerce gave chance
to those with invention, not us, who walked in dirt
and wouldn’t stop to buy a broom. Broad-shouldered gold
Sick as only money is sick, and bound to no loss
of memory or mooring, following no lead.

Rubbing it out, all we felt of the hatters’ lead;
talk reduced to nervous tics, graybarring mercury.
Bedside, I only trembled, you were only lost
in an unvisited city reaching for a chance
To stop shaking. My ears rang to pure tones of gold
flutes unalloyed, household noise, and unswept dirt.

Not even remorse is swept from the hall, nor dirt
Nor shopping carts nor people looking to a lead.
The dome once had support, waste-paper paved with gold
stacked neatly and tiled, and columns of mercury
falling. Falling as ash, snow, and leftover chance
fall, pretending, claiming to have been of great loss.

Crying through eyes for whose lids we had searched and lost,
we cleaned our little mess of glass and tin with dirt,
campers without wilderness playing games of chance,
explorers sculpt a trail with ice picks of lead,
Trammeled direction, a compass of mercury,
from fault to faultline to fault from a vein of gold.

Minding an ore of chance to the most probable loss
I slipped past our goal derived from these hives of dirt,
this duchy of lead, my monarchy of mercury.