dublinka

Paddy K wrote this:

Wet evening in April.

The birds sang in the wet trees
And I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.


I memorised it once. Easy of course. But as time passes you find yourself reciting:

The birds sang in the wet trees
And as I listened to them it was a thousand years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad that I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

On first impression as appears to work better in line two when reciting it aloud, but in fact it alters the way you deal with the next two lines. I sometimes prefer it this way, but I'm not sure its better. Call it a remix. Next, as the poem touches on immortality and eternity, you easily exchange a hundred years for a thousand, but its not quite right. It seems, on examination, somewhat less humble. Less modest. The introduction of that in the last line appears to happen because of the difficulty of delivering the final line with appropriate tone of 'the melancholy' without botching the prior 'I had recorded for him' in the process.