Crimson Changes People
Crimson Changes People - meaning Summary
Vision of War and Loss
The poem confronts a single mourner whose eyes suggest crucifixion, Mary, moths, and No Man's Land, blending religious imagery with wartime loss. It moves through visions of sacrifice, grieving civilians, and the futility of language to express trauma. Repeated questions emphasize the speaker's uncertainty and the mingling of sacred and profane responses to mass death. The poem registers compassion, bewilderment, and the impossibility of fully naming suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesDID I see a crucifix in your eyes and nails and Roman soldiers and a dusk Golgotha? Did I see Mary, the changed woman, washing the feet of all men, clean as new grass when the old grass burns? Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths, with a flutter of wings that meant: we can never come again. Did I see No Man's Land in your eyes and men with lost faces, lost loves, and you among the stubs crying? Did I see you in the red death jazz of war losing moths among lost faces, speaking to the stubs who asked you to speak of songs and God and dancing, of bananas, northern lights or Jesus, any hummingbird of thought whatever flying away from the red death jazz of war? Did I see your hand make a useless gesture trying to say with a code of five fingers something the tongue only stutters? did I see a dusk Golgotha?
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