Casida of the Golden Girl
Casida of the Golden Girl - form Summary
Casida’s Repeating Transformations
This poem uses the casida form to create a compact, ritual-like sequence of images. Short stanzas and recurring motifs (girl, water, gold, nightingale) produce a circular motion in which identity and element continually transform. The formal repetition and parallel phrasing make metamorphosis feel inevitable and musical, so the poem reads as a distilled visionary lyric where a single set of symbols is rotated and refracted until its meaning shifts.
Read Complete AnalysesThe golden girl bathed in the water, and the water turned to gold. The weeds and branches in shadow surprised her, and the nightingale sang for the white girl. And the bright night came, clouded dark silver, with barren mountains in the umber breeze. The wet girl was white in the water and the water, blushed. The dawn came without stain, with its thousand bovine faces, stiff and shrouded there with frosty garlands. The girl of tears bathed among tears, and the nightingale wept with burning wings. The golden girl was a white heron and the water turned her gold.
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