Late night at the Harbourfront

[symphony]

They’ve sent the flowers away
to another country, another world.
But we have fireworks that bloom
at night; by the time the next light flashes
your face has changed.
Maybe another night we would celebrate
as the water catches fire.
Another night we could love,
as you catch me.
But I’ve left my wallet home.

Just a few more minutes till the cigarette dies.
The music (it understands)
will tune itself out.
The streets will still and you will stare,
eyes the colour of punctuated neons.
But I can’t make you promises tonight, love,
when I've left my wallet home.

[symphony]

That bad?

[blank|verse]

It’s certainly not that bad, symphony; it’s just that I’m a bit slow at replying… :)

There are some beautiful moments in the poem: the water ‘catching fire’ (reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins); the use of the verb ‘bloom’ to describe the fireworks, which nicely echoes the flowers in the first line; and the music ‘tun itself out’. And there’s a lot going on in this line:

The streets will still and you will stare,

the alliteration, internal rhymes, monosyllables, and syntactic repetition work very effectively in themselves, but also, more importantly, to reflect what is being said, connecting the scene and the poem’s addressee. Form and content are working well together here, they haven’t just been chucked in for the sake of it, which is a well achieved.

However, I’m really not sure about the refrain used as the last line to each stanza. To me it sounds an incongruously comical note that seems out of keeping with the poem’s tone, which, with the mention of sending flowers away, the night setting and so on, is very quiet and perhaps mournful and respectful; there’s certainly yearning for something different in the repetition of the word ‘another’.

It puts me in mind of the (in)famously bathetic ending to Tennyson’s [I]Enoch Arden:

So past the strong heroic soul away.
And when they buried him the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

For me, the last three lines of the first stanza, and the final two of the second stanza weaken the poem and spoil the mood that has otherwise been delicately created.

A few smaller issues: it should be ‘maybe’ (one word) at the start of line 6; it feels as though a semi-colon would be better after ‘night’ in line 4; and there seems to be a change in tense from present to past in line 5 (‘had changed’) where ‘has changed’ might read more easily, unless you mean the tense-shift.

Do you need ‘the colour of’ when you’re stating the colour (‘neon’) in this line: ‘eyes the colour of punctuated neons’?

And as much as I like ‘the music tuning itself out’, I wonder if the dashed phrase (‘– it understands –‘) is a bit too self-conscious, and draws attention to itself too much. Without it might be stronger:

Just a few more minutes till the cigarette dies
and the music tunes itself out.

So overall, there are some wonderful images, well-expressed, but the poem as a whole feels unbalanced, and I think you need a more subtle way of introducing or incorporating the aspects of the relationship.

[angliholic]

Beautifully and artistically crated.
I had a crush on it

[symphony]

Thanks b|v and angliholic for the comments. I've been looking forward to some feedback.

b|v, I corrected the "maybe", the punctuation, and tense in lines 4-5, thanks. I just put parentheses instead of the unwanted dashes in S2 L2, which to me made the difference by smoothening the phrase out a little. The music understanding us rather than the contrary had an effect I wanted in the poem, so keeping it.
I know the refrain sounds almost comical after setting up the scene, but it was my way of establishing the relationship between the speaker and the addressed. Removing that would cost the poem its essence. Maybe you're right and it should be more subtle, I wish I were clever enough to think of something better. Hmm...

Oh and thanks to you I'll be reading Tennyson's Enoch Arden now.