Well it's been a while. University took over and I have made excuses of being busy ever since, so it is only now that I've given myself the time to sit down with my sonnets again. This is number 6.
6.
It was my first feeling of being at home,
A familiarity with the room,
Enough to have felt comfort on my own,
With the china clinks providing the tune.
It could have been the weather that took me,
The global mist fading what was in front.
Leaving the grey walkers of Esplanadi
As the shaded focus of the pavement.
So I watched the mono-saturated:
The white faces, black ties and overcoats,
Unaware of my blue eyes fixated,
Playing the game of cafes, taking notes.
Before leaving the colour behind too
And joining the ashen catwalk's few.
The original of this is full of awfully forced rhymes and generally when I re-read it felt that it needed wholesale change.
As I've taken a turn toward observation with my poetry I decided that the act of observation within the sonnet was a nice frame to keep; that's also a reason for pushing it into the past tense, as a reflected observation on me observing.
It jumped out that colour was really what I wanted to put across here - though I did it in a pathetic fallacy kind of way; the link of the cliched British weather with what I assume was a current mood, though this time I found it difficult to remember the moment - something I haven't struggled with as yet.
I've copied a technique observed in the past semester in the edit: by leaving colour out, and deliberately noting the black and white shades, it focuses the blue of the watching eyes, which is then only placed to set up the eventual joining to colourless life outside. This is as the cafes were moments of reflection and a time-out from the rush of Erasmus life, it can come across negatively with this description - that it was when away from it that I regained the colour in my eyes but at this moment the weather and amount of work I had becomes synonymous with a dulled eye.
In the original I say "Watching fashion", this is why I observe the ties and overcoats, simple garments that can influence a look and though black and white the "catwalk" of the edit brings the potential juxtaposition of weathered against new.
Though I am still unsure of the "china clinks" line it is the only real connotation of why the room is familiar, implying a tea room, whilst also being an over arching comment on separation from Erasmus in Helsinki.
It's also a point to note that some of the original doesn't even really make sense, hopefully the improvements are substantial.
Original.
The First time I have felt like I'm at home,
All because of a familiar clink.
More like a tearoom, no need for my phone,
Cakes and pastries awaiting my lips, think
This is the place I was recommended.
I sit here, gazing at those who go past.
My place at the front should be commended,
Watching fashion, no questions do I ask.
The grim outside mocks me, return I'm waiting
The low mist pathetic, damp, insipid.
I must leave but not yet, work is berating
Me, I'll watch: but who am I to kid?
People watching is a game for cafes,
But the warmth shall turn my day to a haze.
