Tags
Blue Moon, chorus as an epigraph, original versions, Past, Quantum Leap, Red Moon, rhyme schemes, Who Needs an Easy Love?
Here’s another sonnet that has developed from an earlier version. I call it “Who Needs an Easy Love?” as that’s the first and last line of the chorus of the version I recite/sing. Displaying it as a sonnet, I have chosen to add the rest of the chorus as an epigraph:
Who Needs an Easy Love?
Heaven knows it’s not enough
when the going’s getting tough.
I thought we’d be stupid with bliss on our own:
you’d tumble through clover; I’d move every stone.
I thought we’d see Cupid: he’d prove to be shy;
you’d mumble “It’s over” and kiss me goodbye.
I saw you go barmy ahead on the beach;
my heart turned a somersault, bursting with speech.
I saw you go by me immersed in the street;
my Archer had come: there was lead in my feet.
I knew it was certain just yesterday; I’d
discovered you waiting to leave with the tide.
I knew it was curtains; I’d grieve for the past:
recovered too late, now it’s destined to last.
If only I knew you couldn’t be true,
I wouldn’t be lonely; I wouldn’t be blue.
The rhyme scheme is unusual. Not with regard to the end rhymes, as the sonnet consists of seven couplets, i.e. AA BB CC etc., but with regard to the internal rhymes that come with every stress. Thus the first quatrain has a rhyme pattern of: a b c A/ d e f A/ a b f B/ d e c B. This pattern is repeated in the next two quatrains, while the final couplet has a rhyme pattern of: r G s G/ s r s G. This kind of intricate rhyming is, for me, one of the great pleasures of writing poems and songs. It’s like a meaningful crossword puzzle that can take hours, days, weeks, months, years to solve, and yet there is no given solution. The rhymes also serve as a useful memory aid.
Here’s a version performed with guitar and voice:
A slightly different, earlier version of this rewrite was published in Quantum Leap, May 2003, where it had the title “Blue Moon”. But here’s the original version from my collection, Red Moon, 1987:
Past
I thought that we would go on a tour
Take from the rich and give to the poor,
But adventures never last,
Our romance rusts in the past.
I saw you dancing on the shore,
My heart leapt up like never before.
I saw you striding in the street,
The pain it gave me was so sweet.
I can never forget the day
When you took yourself away.
But I live to love and learn,
I don’t regret a single burn.
You were green and I was blue,
You were eighteen, I was twenty-two.
I still know this original version by heart.