Because I once loved you there

[busker]

It is good you mentioned that because I would naturally read it as:

beCAUSE ionceLOVED you

You should include the correct pronunciation in a little author's note section at the bottom.

Ridiculous, there would be footnotes on every classic poem and half of us would argue with those.

I read it as:

beCAUSE i ONCE LOVED you THERE
LONdon's PRECiuos to ME.
The POEMS WRITten aBOUT you THERE
were REALly LETters to ME.

This reads smoothly and slowly to me. There are so many exceptions (which I still can't keep straight) to standard meter, whether or not they're found here doesn't effect my read as these lines have a beautiful, wistful pace for me. If anything, for me "once" prevents a singsong feel that I think would lessen the opening.

When you say it like that you make it sound silly

One person’s meat is another person’s botfly infested larval soup

---

What I found interesting about all the crits is that the line I most disliked is “love is the only foolish / adventuring we do”, wasn’t disliked all that much. And the things that I really liked, like the pirates of the Caribbean references to the ghostly ghoulish pirate clipper’s crew, didn’t land, at least on those who read it. It’s always informative to have that sort of direct reader feedback

---

Pardon the typos. I access the site on my phone and neither the text dictionary nor v bulletin are optimised for the mobile