Crow Song
Crow Song - meaning Summary
Hope Denied to the Flock
The speaker addresses a flock—literally crows, metaphorically a disillusioned populace—amid a barren landscape. Once the speaker raised a banner of "Hope" that failed and became forbidden; now angelic exhortations to "Win" feel hollow. The poem traces weariness from past leaders, empty rhetoric, and violence, showing a people reduced to pragmatic skepticism and bodily needs. It contrasts idealistic proclamation with the gritty survival instincts of the audience.
Read Complete AnalysesIn the arid sun, over the field where the corn has rotted and then dried up, you flock and squabble. Not much here for you, my people, but there would be if... if... In my austere black uniform I raised the banner which decreed Hope and which did not succeed and which is not allowed. Now I must confront the angel who says Win, who tells me to wave any banner that you will follow for you ignore me, my baffled people, you have been through too many theories too many stray bullets your eyes are gravel, skeptical, in this hard field you pay attention only to the rhetoric of seed fruit stomach elbow. You have too many leaders you have too many wars, all of them pompous and small, you resist only when you feel like dressing up, you forget the sane corpses...
This version is missing the final portion of the poem "I know you would like a god to come down and feed you and punish you. That overcoat on sticks is not alive there are no angels but the angels of hunger, prehensile and soft as gullets Watching you my people, I become cynical, you have defrauded me of hope and left me alone with politics..."