A few days ago, I was ready to abandon the alternating refrain approach of the “Autumn” poem’s 2012 draft—where every second stanza is a couplet with the same starting phrase and internal and end rhyme—in favour of regular end-rhyming couplets.

My chief criticism of the refrains was that they felt, at times, contrived—forced and engineered—not so much contributing to as stunting the unfolding of the poem, wherefore I experimented with the regular couplet format as a more natural—spontaneous and fluent—alternative.

Yesterday, I decided to keep the refrains. In the original version, they emerged from the cadence of the stanzas—dum-di dum-di dum-dum, dum-di dum-di dum repeated in two successive lines—which I sought to emphasise with recurring starting phrases and internal and end rhyme.

At the time, it was perhaps an indulgence—“Autumn” was my first lyric poem—now, I embrace it fully. Already, it demands all my poetic ingenuity to make it work, but I am hopeful that I shall overcome the challenges and achieve an elegant outcome.