What We Were Not

Poetic Deconstruction

Written in honor of, and for the recording and performing artist, Antje Duvekot, this song incorporates a slightly unusual rhythm and rhyming structure. Certainly it was a novel, challenging exercise for me. It does employ a typical verse and chorus framework, within which beats its poetic heart, aside from meaning. Each verse is seven lines in length, with the last word of each line rhyming with the final word of each corresponding line in successive stanzas. Also, the end of lines two, four, and seven rhyme within each stanza. The rhythmic bones incorporate iamb, which is not unusual, as it is the most common form of meter used in English verse, and in which the initial syllable is unstressed, followed by the next having emphasis. Each line in order observes the following syllabic pattern in each stanza:
1st line – four syllables
2nd line – six syllables
3rd line – four syllables
4th line – six syllables
5th line – five syllables
6th line – five syllables
7th line – six syllables

The first two couplets of the chorus nearly achieves iambic pentameter, failing one syllable in each, and therefore ending the second and fourth lines with a weak (i.e., feminine) foot, the final syllable being unstressed. The chorus’s next two couplets (lines five through eight) accomplishes (for lack of a better term) iambic octameter. Finally, the first four couplets (eight lines) of the chorus follow the familiar rhyming pattern of ABAB CDCD, with the concluding two lines being open (non-rhyming) seven-syllable iamb verse, again ending with a feminine foot.

Antje has a beautiful voice, writes lovely lyrics, and composes haunting melodies. This song is my way of thanking her for sharing her talents and her insights with all of us.

There is a voice
I follow here, and then
when summer’s space
has emptied I begin,
to listen with my
heart upon my sleeves
to know your voice again.

Where you have choice
I have not gone, and when
the season’s place
has faded to its end,
a glistened kiss I
steal from you and grieve
what you and I have been.

What can’t I know
that you won’t show me?
How can I grow
if you won’t know me?
The heart without
its compass breaks,
and though I shout
you will not take
what we were not
without you.

If all the noise
on silence fell, and friend
of winter’s face
to snow and ice did bend,
two frozen lips by
tempting risk believe
what cannot be has been.

What can’t I know
that you won’t show me?
How can I grow
if you won’t know me?
The heart without
its compass breaks,
and though I shout
you will not take
what we were not
without you;
that I was not
without you.