Hi Christina,
I don't think it adds anything to the poem by knowing just where an
experience like this would happen - but I always find myself thinking:
bulbs, Monguls, Altai... Where????? So the first reaading relies more on the
drama the poem elicits rather than the information it includes - and that's
good, because I find I'm wanting to read it again (and not dismiss it while
thinking: I dunno what this is about...)
Once I've thought about the clues the poem gives a little I start thinking
about poppies and the drug trade... (but I don't know if they play zithers
where they grow poppies, I'm just assuming they do!)
Then I start wondering again...
The poem's an enigma to me. I keep thinking, "If I knew more about what's
behind this poem..."
However I do feel the person's described well and I interpret the last line
to include the notion that the character only gets a pittance from what he's
grown (with the inference that other people get millions of euros!). So then
I find I go back to the flute he's playing and the two voices he has and
start to think, "Yeah, there's things going on in this poem."
Complex, but canny.
Bob
>From: Christina Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poets Anonymous <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Sub: After Scything the Bulb Fields
>Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 05:17:25 EDT
>
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> After Scything the Bulb Fields
>
>
> We're not breathing cropped blossom
> but vast grasslands and mountain ranges
> of men in Mongol costume whose throat music praises
> a yellow camel with a quick, pliable pace.
>
> In a space wider than polders, he used the bones
> of his dead mare to make his fiddle, her hair to string
>the
>bow.
> One mouth is two simultaneous voices
> and I can't fathom the source of a flute he's not playing
> over the drone of a constant, fundamental tone.
>
> If I'd a zither I'd sing the wind, canter the Altai
> and dance, always towards the sun,
> but the music stops and the crowd disperses
> throwing Euro cents in a small, teak box.
>
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> christina fletcher
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