The question is clearly answered: yes, we have always stood on shaky ground. The poem embodies shakiness of the spirit, yet "tightly wound" is understood to be part of that; still I find l11 particularly courageous in the way it circles back on itself (clocking the heart and the heart as a clock, as well as the repetition of "the heart"). I find the poem disturbing, as "aftershocks" must be (never having felt one, or much of any earthquake, but dreading them none the less), as all terra infirma can be; yet the most hopeful line is L7: the "stranger land, and vaster" comes to me as the great hope of spaciousness. On the other hand, the poem is about darkness primarily, and fear. From this the reader may gain.
Terese
|