Table Talk
Table Talk - meaning Summary
Preference Without Reason
The poem reflects on mortality and the contingency of personal taste. Accepting that death is inevitable, the speaker treats liking as accidental rather than prescriptive, illustrating this through everyday colors—red, gray, green. Preference is presented as a small, inexplicable fact: one simply "happens to like" certain things. The tone is resigned and observational, suggesting that such likes are incidental features of how life falls into place.
Read Complete AnalysesGranted, we die for good. Life, then, is largely a thing Of happens to like, not should. And that, too, granted, why Do I happen to like red bush, Grey grass and green-gray sky? What else remains? But red, Gray, green, why those of all? That is not what I said: Not those of all. But those. One likes what one happens to like. One likes the way red grows. It cannot matter at all. Happens to like is one Of the ways things happen to fall.
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