Not clear exactly what to do now to clear the eye, sandpaper away from that tender membrane what has settled on it - crust of unknowing, crust of the single fixed idea, crust of the image that won't lift or dissipate, like the fog that eats the mountain here for days, high, no, low as the sloped roof of this one-story cottage and nothing, no cleansing breath or freshened light, can pierce it. So what to say to scour it? Name the burn, name the blade, knife, axe, melting acid that will take away what sticks there tight as one layer of skin sticks to another while the body lasts, or fast as one hand, drowning, clasps another. Copyright © Eamon Grennan. http://www.wlu.edu/~shenando | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BLESSED DAMOZEL by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 101 by ALFRED TENNYSON SHEEP AND LAMBS by KATHARINE TYNAN THE CLOAK, THE BOAT, AND THE SHOES by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS SOLILOQUY; NOVEMBER 11, 1928 by N. R. A. BECKER A DREAM by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE COLLIER LADDIE by ROBERT BURNS |