Terminal
Terminal - meaning Summary
Decay and Domestic Horror
The poem depicts a dreamer who returns to find familiar domestic spaces transformed into scenes of decay and death. Imagery of catacombs, worms, and a predatory butler turns household comfort into grotesque consumption. The butler presents the dreamer’s bride as a prepared dish, mingling themes of mourning, violation, and the collapse of intimacy. The tone is nightmarish and allegorical, exploring how love and home can become sites of destruction.
Read Complete AnalysesRiding home from credulous blue domes, the dreamer reins his waking appetite in panic at the crop of catacombs sprung up like plague of toadstools overnight: refectories where he reveled have become the holstery of worms, rapacious blades who weave within the skeleton's white womb a caviare decay of rich brocades. Turning the tables of this grave gourmet, the fiendish butler saunters in and serves for feast the sweetest meat of hell's chef d' uvres: his own pale bride upon a flaming tray: parsleyed with elegies, she lies in state waiting for his grace to consecrate.
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