The Evening of Greuze
The Evening of Greuze - meaning Summary
Vulnerability and Smallness
The poem describes a speaker’s sense of vulnerability and isolation as he watches trivial life and encroaching, confining structures. Observations — insects, a windowless cement house, uncertain replies to decades of letters — become metaphors for shrinking possibilities and emotional danger. Autumn turbulence and the instruction to remain cold and empty
amplify the precarious mood. Yet brief, tangible images like a lizard’s glint and a horse’s velvet blanket hint at a guarded, emerging hope.
As a group we were somewhat vulnerable and are so today. My brother-in-law has fixed me a tower in the mill, from whose oriel I can see the bluebottles who nag heaven with their unimportance. But what are they expected to do? Raise families? Become deacons? If so my calculations collapse into bric-a-brac, my equations are undone. Across the road they are building a cement house. It will seemingly have no windows. A columbarium for cement pigeons. And ever as I talked to you down the decades in my letters one thing was unsure: your reply. Now we are again endangered, like dead birds, and autumn’s ruby spittle mounts in the sky like a tornado. Try to keep cold and empty in this bare room. The lizard’s glint, the horse’s velvet blanket will surprise you into veiled hope one day.
from Chinese Whispers (2002)
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