Poem VAR #258

There’s a certain slant of light
on winter afternoons
that oppresses like the weight
of cathedral tunes

Heavenly hurt it gives us
we can find no scar
but internal difference
where the meanings are

None may teach it anything
’t is the seal despair
an imperial affliction
sent us of the air

When it comes the landscape listens
shadows hold their breath
when it goes ’t is like the distance
on the look of death



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HWL's Comment

Date of writing: 1979

Subject: On my last analysis of this I preferred to take it in unilateral sense: a poem expressing feelings of sadness over a good year gone, looked at through the view of a wintry landscape on an afternoon. I now go back to my obligation: The sexual meaning is of an extra heavy male ejaculation, burying female hopes of even only a crumb orgasm.



Symbols

air, death, despair, differ, distance, heaven, light, look, tune, winter

Categories

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