Remembered Women
Remembered Women - meaning Summary
Memory Keeps Soldiers Going
The poem depicts soldiers enduring bleak, muddy battlefields who are sustained by memories of women left behind. A remembered face becomes a small, urgent light amid darkness; the immediate horizon promises violence while the past is etched with intimate recollection. The troops continue ‘‘for the women they hate and the women they love,’’ suggesting memory—both tender and bitter—drives perseverance through repetitive hardship and imminent danger.
Read Complete AnalysesFOR a woman's face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the horizon sings of a new kill and a big kill. The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a woman's face— they fight on and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray rain— for the women they hate and the women they love— for the women they left behind, they fight on.
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