#6: Redoing Poems

Original:

The Lemons

In April they were still tough and green,
strangely proud in the cold sun.

And all around the garden the leaves
conspiring in green on green on green.

By June they turned. The branches sunk
in the wind. The lemons shone with dust.

Some of them fell and rolled down
the hill to the town bellow us.

Packed tight against the sea's
wind, the town was abandoned now.

The roofs fallen away. The setting sun
cutting its way among the rubble.

At night we'd walk down
the big hill and look back up.

We couldn't see the house where we slept,
where our lives were decided.

But the lemons hit the black hill.
By their marks we found our way home.

The winds and the lemons wedded in August,
and the lemons dropped to the cool ground.

A crisp mist settled on the town.
The rains swarmed in from the sea.

All of it became inseparable in our minds.
Walking down the hill and back

again, your hand would fall
into my hand and stay there.

Redone:

In April they were still tough and green,
strangely proud in the cold sun.
And all around the garden the leaves
conspiring in the green on green on green.

By June they turned. The branches sunk
in the wind. The lemons shone with dust.
Some of them fell and rolled down
the hill to the town below us.

Packed tight against the sea's
wind, the town was abandoned now.
The roofs fallen away. The setting sun
cutting its way among the rubble.

At night we'd walk down
the big hill and look back up.
We couldn't see the house where we slept,
where our lives were decided.

But the lemons lit the black hill.
By their marks we found our way home.
The winds and the lemons wedded in August,
and the lemons dropped to the cool ground.

A crisp mist settled on the town.
The rains swarmed in from the sea.
All of it became inseparable in our minds.
Walking down the hill and back

again, your hand would fall
into my hand and stay there.


When you change the stanzas in The Lemons, it takes a different meaning. When the poem is written in couplets, you can see that the poem seems to be telling a story about aging. The couplets help her to present the stages of life individually, then allows them to come together so that they create a pattern and a flow. When the poem is put into quatrains, it doesn't give you that necessary pause between stanzas. The quatrain is comfortable, and "easier on the eyes," so to speak, but it also prevents the poet from giving the reader a series of events that must be separate to be understood. Also, when the poem is changed to a quatrain, the poem seems to be more about lemons, or growing up around lemons, and takes away from the deeper meaning that a reader could get out of the poem.