Valley Song
Valley Song - meaning Summary
Memory of Valley and Eyes
The poem registers a personal grief that fuses landscape and beloved into enduring memory. The speaker recalls moonlit valley scenes and the beloved's dark eyes, alternately promising reunion and acknowledging impossibility. Images persist as "three ghosts" or companions, indicating that memory sustains presence even when physical reality is gone. The closing lines compress loss into a private riddle: having held the moon, the timberline, and the person, the speaker now keeps them only as memory.
Read Complete AnalysesYour eyes and the valley are memories. Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl. It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline. It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley. I will see you again to-morrow. I will see you again in a million years. I will never know your dark eyes again. These are three ghosts I keep. These are three sumach-red dogs I run with. All of it wraps and knots to a riddle: I have the moon, the timberline, and you. All three are gone -- and I keep all three.
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