Summer
Summer - meaning Summary
Healing Landscape After Exploitation
Judith Wright's Summer depicts a landscape altered by mining, showing scars and the slow work of recovery as lichens, saplings and animals recolonize ruined ground. Ruined miners' huts and shafted riverbanks indicate past violence while new growth forms scabs over rock, suggesting both injury and regeneration. The speaker admits a desire to perceive the land without human language but acknowledges being bound by words.
Read Complete AnalysesThis place’s quality is not its former nature But a struggle to heal itself after many wounds. Upheaved ironstone, mudstone, quartz and clay Drank dark blood once, heard cries and the running of feet. Now that the miners’ huts are a tumble of chimney-stones Shafts near the river shelter a city of wombats. Scabs of growth form slowly over the rocks. Lichens, algae, wind-bent saplings grow… In a burned-out summer, I try to see without words As they do. But I live through a web of language.
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