Eight Months Later

love loss free verse

Eight Months Later - meaning Summary

Loss and Failed Return

Robert Lowell's 'Eight Months Later' moves through fragmented scenes of scorched fields, a crowded Manhattan, and a yearning for Mexico to convey displacement and irrevocable loss. The second section recalls a luminous southern landscape that has slipped away, while the final stanza insists that certain things—swallows, dewdrops, and a consecrated love—will not return. The poem registers mourning and exile rather than consolation.

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1. Eight Months Later It’s certain we burned the grass, the grass is burning: the dismal stones of the field make off for the pond; safe in the muddy water, they change to ducks in brown fatigues, eight ducks without a drake- if we lose the war eight women without a man…. The cement mixer sings like a choir of locusts. The worst of Manhattan is everything is stacked: ten buildings dancing in the hat of one, here a rugged one-family 1890’s château- one family? This would house all the first Mormons, their droit de seigneur. One tower would tent Mohammed, another Abraham. We wish we were elsewhere: Mexico . . . Mexico? Where is Mexico? Who will live this year back, cat on the ladder? 2.Die Gold-Orangen We see the country where the lemon blossoms, and the pig-gold orange glows on its dark branch, and the south wind stutters from the blue hustings; the bluebell is brown, the cypress points too straight- we see it; its behind us, love, behind us. Do you see the house, the roof on marble pillars? The sideboard silvers, and the arbors blaze; the statue stands naked to stare at you. What have I done with us, and what was done? And the mountain, El Volcan, the climb of clouds? The mule-man lost his footing in the clouds, seed of the dragon coupled in the caves…. The cliff drops; over it, the water drops, and steams away the marks that led us on. 3. Volveran The dark swallows will doubtless come back here killing the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak; but these that stopped in flight to see your beauty and my good fortune…as if they knew our names- they’ll not come back. The thick lemony honeysuckle, climbing from its earthroot to your window, will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening; but these…dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling, the tears of the day – they’ll not come back. Yet love will sound its fireword to you, and wake your heart, perhaps, from its deep sleep; but silent, absorbed, and on their knees, as men adore God at the altar, as I love you- don’t be deceived, you will not be loved like that.