what you end up with

I ended up with something I like. Whether it rose up from the depths as my metaphor had it when I was struggling with version 5 or whether it was the stone that broke its surface that allowed a reformation into a thing that seemed right, dunno. There have been times I've revised a poem where it seemed I was merely clearing away junk that was obscuring what the poem really was. There have been other times, and I think this was one of those, where the poem just didn't have the right chemical bonds and needed to be smashed in order for the parts to shift around and find their true complements.

Here's the question. Are these the same poem?:


1.

Let me hold your hand.
Let me hold your hand somewhere.
Somewhere in the house.
In the house on the beach with the rain falling.
The rain falling like coins from a slot machine, splashing.
Splashing onto, out of, splashing against.
The riches of splashing, the gold of the river, the silver.
Silver without light, the hard sharp edge of worth.
What's worth it, what's worth darkness, what's the crash out of darkness.

Let me hold your hand.
Let me hold your hand where it is in the cold room in your lap.


2.

Crash upsets the table of values.
Echoes caught on one wall, struggle there.

The dent in the seat cushion begins its rise.

Wealth of one shadow.

The full room, made of old materials.

Light, thrown from the body, bunches on the floor.

Window, open a crack, lets in color
rain has been going over.

River responds to this stone.

Offer me the hand that is colder.


*

I'm not at all sure they're the same poem. That the second owes its existence to the first isn't the answer. The second is exploring territory I've lately been poking about -- the juxtaposition of elements that are related by leaps of imagination. The first, written roughly 7 years ago, is part of what I was doing then -- building elements one from the next via repetition of words from the preceding line. The latest version (#2 above) has no repetition. #2 does include some of the imagery from #1 -- rain, cold, river, hand. "Crash" has gone from "crash out of darkness" to "Crash upsets the table of values" ... and from the end of the poem to the beginning. Then one might do a reading for meaning, right? Do the poems share a meaning? Both seem to seek a human grounding -- the held hand -- in a dark/shadowed, cold, broken (crash, splashing against, struggle, thrown) world.

Why do I think the poem finished? I do think it finished. I'm quite happy with it. That happened all of a sudden. Less than a half an hour after the poem seemed nowhere. The final version is largely the same as the version immediately preceding. Of the final version's 10 lines 8 are exactly or almost the same as lines in the preceding version. Yet they seem different to me. Is it that the order has been changed? That's part of it. "Offer me the hand that is colder," is now the last line. In the preceding version three lines followed it. It seems to me the final version echoes the first version in the request for the hand, that it seems most appropriate it be the poem's last need.

Is it the white space I've allowed in? In the final version most of the lines are also stanzas. In the preceding version there are three 4-line stanzas. The images, the propositions have space to assert themselves, be independent. In the larger stanzas the lines seemed more hurried, their connections forced. The final version emphasizes the parts, the brokenness. It wants more attention on the effects of each line.