The Memory
The Memory - meaning Summary
Legacy of Pain and Longing
The poem presents a compressed, intense meditation on collective suffering and memory. Agricultural imagery—cotton rows, sugar cane—stands for hard labor and historical oppression. Physical and emotional exhaustion recur through images of burning bodies, thunderbolts, and endless nights, while crying infants and a "shame" blanket suggest inherited pain across generations. The tone is bleak and elegiac, emphasizing cyclical suffering rather than resolution or consolation.
Read Complete AnalysesCotton rows crisscross the world And dead-tired nights of yearning Thunderbolts on leather strops And all my body burning Sugar cane reach up to God And every baby crying Shame the blanket of my night And all my days are dying
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