Buffalo Dusk
Buffalo Dusk - form Summary
Refrain Shapes Elegy
This short free-verse poem uses spare lines and a repeated couplet to register loss. The simple, circular structure — opening and ending with the same observation — creates an elegiac refrain that emphasizes disappearance: both the buffaloes and the people who witnessed them are gone. The repetition and plain diction give the poem a ritual quality, turning a factual statement into a communal lament about vanished landscapes and memories.
Read Complete AnalysesTHE BUFFALOES are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk, Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. And the buffaloes are gone.
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