Event
Event - meaning Summary
Isolation Within Intimate Darkness
The poem depicts a cold, ossified night in which two people lie back-to-back, emotionally estranged. Stark, painful images—a crying owl, a restless infant, hard stars, and a "small white maggot"—suggest inner torment, bodily disintegration, and the speaker's inability to reach or recognize the beloved. Love is declared impossible; instead the poem records fragmentation, helplessness, and a final, desperate contact described as touching "like cripples." It conveys isolation and failed intimacy.
Read Complete AnalysesHow the elements solidify! --- The moonlight, that chalk cliff In whose rift we lie Back to back. I hear an owl cry From its cold indigo. Intolerable vowels enter my heart. The child in the white crib revolves and sighs, Opens its mouth now, demanding. His little face is carved in pained, red wood. Then there are the stars - ineradicable, hard. One touch : it burns and sickens. I cannot see your eyes. Where apple bloom ices the night I walk in a ring, A groove of old faults, deep and bitter. Love cannot come here. A black gap discloses itself. On the opposite lip A small white soul is waving, a small white maggot. My limbs, also, have left me. Who has dismembered us? The dark is melting. We touch like cripples.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.