On the Borders
On the Borders - meaning Summary
Resting in Spare Landscape
The poem describes a drive across a sparse upland and how that empty, open landscape pauses the speaker's thinking. The speaker resists interpreting the scene as art or turning it into criticism, preferring to let images stand without ownership or sale. A hawk and the cloud-roofed country suggest a needed space around images and a naive encounter with beauty, likened to people seeing roses in soap for the first time.
Read Complete AnalysesWe're driving across tableland somewhere in the world; it is almost bare of trees. Upland near void of features always moves me, but not to thought; it lets me rest from thinking. I feel no need to interpret it as if it were art. Too much of poetry is criticism now. That hawk, clinging to the eaves of the wind, beating its third wing, its tail isn't mine to sell. And here is more like the space that needs to exist aound an image. This cloud-roof country reminds me of the character of people who first encountered roses in soap.
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