... @3it is the recognition that human life cannot, after all, be subsumed within nature's annual course which, along with that affirmation of nature's sympathy for man, defines the pastoral elegist's vision of death.@1 Ellen Z. Lambert, @3Placing Sorrow@1 A small square with elms trying to reduce the sky to a manageable portion, a bandstand baroque in its wooden Victorian swags. The children are muted on swings; couples stroll in each other's arms; a man, belly billowing over his belt, drinks his beer to Sousa's beat; a woman next to him knits in time. "I told you," says a boy beside the swings in the growing darkness swooped by bats, "we're stronger than them 'cause girls have to have babies." She taught me to curl a dandelion by splitting the stem and pushing my tongue against the bitter fork until green ringlets came in my spit. Her face like a withered viburnum against the pillow - "Why are men so mean? That young woman next door works all day and then she cooks and cleans." "She doesn't have to, Mother." "But she does. She has to." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LISBON PACKET by GEORGE GORDON BYRON UPON JULIA'S VOICE by ROBERT HERRICK THOSE EVENING BELLS by THOMAS MOORE THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 52. WILLOWWOOD (4) by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI MY SHADOW by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON |