Overheard in Harvard Square, part 1

I was walking through Harvard Square last night, taking pictures of things that were still there, when two college-age girls walked past me, one of them (the brunette) saying as she passed by, "I think I've finally figured out romance."

I immediately wrote the line down, and after texting a few people the message: There's nothing like walking through Harvard Square and hearing a 20-year-old brunette say "I think I've finally figured out romance," I sat down in Au Bon Pain with a coffee and a brownie and, realizing that the brunette's words were a perfect iambic line, started writing a villanelle.

A villanelle is a nineteen line poem with only two rhymes, in which the first and third lines of the first stanza alternate as the last lines of the next four three-line stanzas, and then are repeated as the last couplet of a final four-line stanza. The most famous villanelle is Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; like most people, I knew the poem before I knew what it was.

Here's what I wrote, false starts and all:

"I think I've finally figured out romance,"
The young brunette declared in Harvard Square.
"The dancer doesn't matter, it's the dance.

You meet the ones you love by happenstance
Like winning Banco at chemin de fer.
I think I've finally figured out romance.

You can make love to thousands of gallants
And not a single one of them will care.
The dancer doesn't matter, it's the dance.

Stop chasing after anything with pants
As if you're only Ginger with Astaire.
I think I've finally figured out romance.
The dancer doesn't matter, it's the dance."

Initial verdict: perfect final stanza, perfect opening stanza, gallants/dance stanza fits perfectly, and where the foo did chemin de fer come from? (Answer: I spent last week watching The Ultimate James Bond, Volume 3.)

So that stanza goes, leaving me with a beginning, part of a middle, and an end. Since I'll be working on that today during the Pats game, look for some sports metaphors in the next draft.