Le Livre Est Sur La Table
Le Livre Est Sur La Table - meaning Summary
Presence Shaped by Absence
The poem examines how perception and desire construct meaning amid absence. Fragmented scenes—a woman who may know what she does not know, an old man, a bird-house by the sea, men in boxes—show images and objects filling gaps left by missing knowledge. The speaker imagines and projects fullness onto things, but recurring questions about whether secrets vanish when the woman leaves underline uncertainty about language, memory, and the persistence of meaning.
Read Complete AnalysesI All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position. This being so, We can only imagine a world in which a woman Walk and wears her hair and knows All that she does not know. Yet we know What her breasts are. And we give fullness To the dream. The table supports the book, The plume leaps in the hand. But what Dismal scene is this? the old man pouting At a black cloud, the woman gone Into the house, from which the wailing starts? II The young man places a bird-house Against the blue sea. He walks away And it remains. Now other Men appear, but they live in boxes. The sea protects them like a wall. The gods worship a line-drawing Of a woman, in the shadow of the sea Which goes on writing. Are there Collisions, communications on the shore Or did all secrets vanish when The woman left? Is the bird mentioned In the waves’ minutes, or did the land advance?
from Some Trees (1956)
Feel free to be first to leave comment.