“Recurrent Pattern” by Danil Rudoy is a 2019 poem from Love Is Poetry. Its repeated questions place love, time and self-judgment inside a cycle the speaker is determined to understand and break.
Recurrent Pattern
What do I have, if it’s not a vision?
Why do I care, if it’s not in vain?
Being a man is a hard decision:
All that it brings to the heart is pain.
Mine is a fate any god would treasure;
Yet, to become an accomplished god,
I must provide a successful measure
Showing my fortune was not a fraud.
Now in the thirties I’m all but listless,
Busy as hell as I try to prove
Spiritual love to the Highest Priestess.
She’d rather die than accept the truth:
Life is a game of interpretation,
Nothing in it is a static fact.
Ignorance, rapture or aggravation:
All that we feel is what we attract.
Hard to believe, but I know it better:
Infinite time is a lesson learned.
Tears in ink draw a scarlet letter
And all the margins around are burned.
Look at the page: it becomes a mirror,
Scattered reflections besiege the mind.
Yet, as the image at last grows clearer,
Rage beats her reason and leaves her blind.
How do I break the recurrent pattern?
How do I finish this endless arc?
Venus would love to assist, but Saturn
Urges to wait in the quiet dark.
There she stays, in sepulchral bedrooms,
Sad and sedated, upset and stressed,
Sore and surrounded by overfed grooms,
Putting her sanity to a test.
Haply, emotions are only spices.
Firm and impeccable, as a rule,
I must proceed with my own devices:
Much like the Emperor, not the Fool,
All while the Devil exhales: “You aced it!
Look at the progress!” You silly twat.
Years of my life have been slowly wasted:
Now is the time to make up for that.
March 7th – May 14th 2019
Publication
“Recurrent Pattern” appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life, in The Endless Day.
The returning questions
The poem opens with two questions about vision and value, then later makes the pattern explicit: “How do I break the recurrent pattern? / How do I finish this endless arc?” Questioning becomes structural recurrence. The speaker recognizes repetition while remaining inside it, and the final stanza turns that recognition into a demand for action.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “Recurrent Pattern” on Prose & Poetry follows the poem’s repetition, rhetorical questions, mirror imagery, symbolic figures, five-stanza form and closing decision.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.