So, I was unpacking earlier and I found a little scrap of paper that I’d seen before but never paid attention to. It’s the first draft of the poem that I like enough to show people even now. Most of my poems, I start to dislike not long after writing them. This one is different. Here is the current/final draft:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne
when you returned the world to Atlas?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz
just a quiet effervescence that screamed
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, that is,
and with no help but the world.
And when you became what you pretended to be,
did you lift a glass to the horizon?

Did you smile like it’s a crime,
or maybe like a secret between you and me
though we haven’t shared secrets for years?
Did you smile, afraid to smile,
frightened to be unafraid?

Remember when I sang your fears to sleep?
I never expected them to leave.
Did you think of me when they fled?
Or did you drink my memory away?
I know the champagne
is stronger than you’re used to.

It was something in your eyes,
I think,
and I knew you weren’t who you were.
And neither am I–
who I was, I mean,
and so, like strangers,
we pass in the street with a smile and a “What if?”
but we’re not like strangers at all.

The first draft reads as follows:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz,
but a quiet effervescence that screams
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, I mean, and on your very own,
no help but the world.

Or did you sigh and smile, content,
as you returned the world to Atlas?
And you did grow weary
and made him take it back–
and he was willing to bear it all for you.
Yours was no Herculean task.

I was expecting something I didn’t know I knew:
It was your eyes
(and your smile and your posture and your body language).
They made strangers say you were
the loneliest girl they’d ever seen.
I never understood until I saw
your eyes sparkling like champagne
or maybe I saw your contended smile
as you saw someone else
carry the world.

The rest of the post is concealed behind the jump, in the event you don’t want to read me talking about the “technical” details here.

Some of the changes seem utterly intuitive, and some of them I wish I’d kept. I’d forgotten how much I’d changed of this one, though, which is the interesting thing. I never draft. But this was a poem that I had to write, with an opening that I’m still proud of, and it told a story that was too important to me to keep off the written page. It never kept a title. It started its life as “elegy for a profound lack of confidence” and became “Non Sum Qualis Eram,” and I usually call it “Elegy for a Profound Lack of Confidence” now, but that’s still not a title I like, that I want it to keep.

I may have to see if I can give old poems this treatment more. In almost every particular it improved. The opening went from good to some of the best things I have written. The narrative lost its straightforward thrust and became more about imagery and wordplay. The narrator went from passive to a figure who seemed to almost regret these changes, someone who almost resented it. It added an entire new dynamic, hints at something more going on. And finally, as is often the case, I tried to repeat an element in the first version and abandoned the attempt during revisions.