Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem "Trilce: 72" by César Vallejo is a penetrating examination of confinement, transformation, and the sometimes ineffable intricacies of emotional landscapes. The speaker begins by addressing a "slow room," which becomes a kind of character or symbol throughout the piece. This room, "closed" and "bittered," appears to represent the past-a place of prior existence that once teemed with emotions and experiences but is now inaccessible. The room has been closed, but the closing was not a simple act; it's tangled in the ambiguous "still wanting you, you know it."

The "keys" of the room, metaphorical and perhaps literal, are now in unknown hands, and this loss initiates a poignant sense of transformation. Vallejo paints a vivid image of demolishing "pavilions that were singing," hinting at a farewell to past pleasures or perhaps illusions.

Then the poem switches gears. Where there was closure and loss, now "foliage has grown" and "peasants" are seen "working, their backs loaded with success." It seems as though life-earthy, physical, working life-has surged in the vacuum left by the closed room, by the past. This shift, however, is not uncomplicated. The peasants' "backs loaded with success" may be a poetic way to mention the weight of what looks like prosperity, a burden in its own right.

Vallejo makes a curious mathematical observation that "the elapsed month and a half are enough for one shroud, even too much." Time, it seems, is more than sufficient to accommodate loss ("one shroud"), suggesting a kind of readiness or even eagerness to move on, yet this readiness is excessive ("even too much").

The room returns as a "Room with four entrances and no exit," a paradoxical space that offers the illusion of choice but not the freedom of departure. It's a place of complexities ("six dialects") and inexpressible nuances. It embodies the multi-faceted nature of human emotions-ones that are often conflicting, unclear, but deeply felt.

The ending of the poem engages with the cyclic and perplexing nature of time. "July was, then, the ninth month," contradicts the Gregorian calendar, but it may hint at a personal or cultural calendar, or even a psychological sense of time. "Love told an odd sound," encapsulates the inexplicability and mystery surrounding emotions, while "the sweetness gave to every shroud, even too much," reiterates that our experiences, sweet or bitter, are always in excess, never fitting neatly into our expectations or understandings.

"Trilce: 72" becomes a labyrinth of closed rooms and open fields, of demolitions and growth, of love and shrouds. It navigates through the complicated corridors of memory, desire, and the inexorable passage of time, leaving us with the resonant feeling that life, in all its bitter sweetness, is perpetually elusive, always "even too much." It's a space where we are eternally trapped and eternally free, held captive by our past and yet always on the precipice of an unknown future.

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