"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life." JOHN UPDIKE
Penumbrae
The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn
bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum—
black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.
The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.
Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus
each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,
as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.
And shadows on water!—
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,
or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.
And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun
hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.
Analyses of Penumbrae:
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To me, this is a difficult poem because from the beginning to almost the end I did not understand exactly what the author would like to say to us. Until the last stanza, I just realized the meaning of this poem so far that it does not matter where we are, what we do, or what our careers are, everyone has a unique character and a unique talent as a shadow. The others could see it or not because they didn't discover inside from us yet or maybe wet expose it yet. That's why the speaker show us the value of each season and how they are beautiful with their own characters such as the leafless wood. |
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