When Serpents Bargain
When Serpents Bargain - meaning Summary
Nature Mocks Human Institutions
The poem imagines a world where natural beings adopt human legal and commercial behaviors: serpents bargaining, sun demanding wages, trees seeking permission. These surreal reversals underscore the speaker’s skepticism about human exceptionalism. Only if nature begins to act like organized, contractual society will the speaker "believe in that incredible unanimal mankind." The closing line is ironic, suggesting human order is less innate than presumed and perhaps unnatural itself.
Read Complete Analyseswhen serpents bargain for the right to squirm and the sun strikes to gain a living wage - when thorns regard their roses with alarm and rainbows are insured against old age when every thrush may sing no new moon in if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice - and any wave signs on the dotted line or else an ocean is compelled to close when the oak begs permission of the birch to make an acorn - valleys accuse their mountains of having altitude - and march denounces april as a saboteur then we'll believe in that incredible unanimal mankind (and not until)
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