haze
My thoughts are negative today,
tentative of what we know
But you can’t see it clearly.
The low sky is indescribable
Report absence only.
The blank page is a duplicate of it.
birds don’t sing or come
on the threshold where we sit
Stored in our own vault.
I glanced at her face now
As it is, in your eyes
But I didn’t have the courage to watch it again.
Fog surrounds the outside
Be approachable and introverted.
we also keep silent,
Missing Her – But I Can’t Share
Memories more vivid than that day –
And all the drafts she made.
Such days will continue,
stupid, lethargic, sightless,
before the storm returns
perspective, necklace of fog
hanging from the trellis, broken,
Fall down and smudge the empty page.
Mist mainly looks at the state of mind of couples sitting indoors, in a room, and by a window with no view. Unlike the poignantly political The Autumn Outings, it represents a private loss that includes speechlessness.
Absence and void are so strongly documented in the poem’s four elegantly arranged, sometimes rhyme-haunted verses. Through moments of observation and understated backstories, they assert the centrality of that mysterious something that ‘we know/but can’t see clearly’, the immediate, almost-eyed vision of speechless absence. without compromising its appearance.
The first and last stanzas (especially the first stanza) are reminiscent of the “blank page” familiar to most writers. Interestingly, if the emptiness of the first stanza is “defying description,” it is not simply that the writer cannot put it down on paper. “Speaking Only of Absence” does not allow the sky itself to produce a visual effect, as an artist can fail. own thing. But there is more to this poem than creative blank imagery. The collective pronoun “we” indicates that the generative experience of the poem is shared with someone else (who is actually the addressee of the poem), both of whom are unable to define and utter their own thoughts. is shown. Both are “our own custody” and we see the same canceled view, but are unable to convey a heavy, clouded memory.
The dense fog and its effects – the ‘low altitude’, lack of sound and movement – have a metaphorical function of course, but they appear to be part of the physical reality that the poem wants to document along with the psychological dimension. In the final stanza, however, the imagined future relies heavily on metaphor. Torn apart by wind and rain, the fog becomes fragmented and accessible, leaving the ’empty page’ with at least a delicate ‘neck’ trail of liquid blown off the grate. The release of both tears and ink is implied by the key verb “dirty.”
Few details are given about the “story” at the heart of the poem. The second verse is the closest to disclosure, and does so with a palpable wince. These are wonderfully thought-provoking lines. From her next verse, we learn that whoever disappeared so painfully, she had the energy to make an abundance of “drafts.”
“Draft” may include a pun on “draft” to indicate a writer who was busy working when he was able to fill the page with ideas generated by a cherished and inspiring presence.
The absence of sharing that poetry records is not necessarily the result of death. Maybe your child ran away from home? That form of bereavement, commonly tagged as “empty-nest syndrome,” may have been quietly set up with earlier references to birds no longer chirping and coming to the window sills for food. The poem shows that it was radical in its very modest regard to explaining the nature of loss. Wisely, the last stanza does not call for or predict ‘closure’, but simply observes that further ‘days like that’ will change the weather and bring the outlook back. And the scene where the words flow again is almost set.
