Quote:
Originally posted by MacArthur:
Curtis, did you understand that Dickey's extended imagery concerns the gradual onset of winter snowfall, and the transfer of the horses from summer pasturage to winter boarding? It's tongue-in-cheeek from the horses (presumed) POV. Let's say horses don't think this way...but perhaps we might, if we were horses?
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That still doesn't explain these lines:
There is no cloud so dark and white at once;
There is no pool at dawn that deepens
Their faces and thirsts as this does
or the final stanza.
I could read these lines as being a description of the horses' deaths because they stayed out in the snow, thirsted, etc., the "nails" are from their hooves, and the stables have been built around where they've died (and maybe where they've been buried?)--This makes it sad, if so.
Again, why "dusk?" instead of "winter" for the title? Are the nails "among the wood/hewed down years ago," or are the silent stars there?--Putting up the stalls, building them, suggests a correspondence between the rotten wood and the nails, perhaps an unnecessary (and, regrettable) correspondence?