I’ll just mention that I wrote a short essay on that poem, which was published in Quid number 17, 2006. Unfortunately my new computer won’t open any document older than 2009. 

Not steering wheels, why should you want to “muffle” a steering wheel? The poem’s concerned with the distance and toil that things have to go through to reach your own cozy little fireside, like coal, and a symphony from Austria, and amber which was transported vast distances in mediaeval times, and the muffled wheels might suggest that part of this conveyance was secret or illegal, and had to be concealed. It is suggested that this distant trade has become part of us, a foreign element in our blood, our duality. The details are remarkably cogent, but there remain some puzzling word choices, and the ending doesn’t settle anything, doesn’t impel  action .  Don’t you think?

pr

On 14 Jan 2018, at 1:34 am, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Are those steering "wheels"? I had a friend who was unimpressed with his "academic diction" (solar flares?) but there is more to it, I think, and not just because of context. I like to blather.

               wheels

        muffled in sheep-

skin

Luke