[quote]Originally posted by R. S. Gwynn:
BUTCHERING
My mother's mother, toughened by the farm,
hardened by infants' burials, used a knife
and swung an axe as if her woman's arm
wielded a man's hard will. Inured to life
and death alike, "What ails you now?" she'd say
ungently to the sick. She fed them too,
roughly but well, and took the blood away--
and washed the dead, if there was that to do.
She told us children how the cows could sense
when their own calves were marked for butchering,
and how they lowed, their wordless eloquence
impossible to still with anything--
sweet clover, or her unremitting care.
She told it simply, but she faltered there.
I wonder if the admirable economy and monolithicity of the poem wouldn't be even more striking if
(a) "poetic" terms like "wordless eloquence" and "unremitting care" were simply omitted (in the first case) or brought into the same resonant sphere of discourse (in the second); and
(b) that last line, which seems unneeded, and even sentimental (especially in such a context), were replaced by something that merely closes the <u>action</u>, without the implicit comment on it (in other words, she didn't just falter there, for me, which is what would work--as a stage direction, for instance).
Of course there's the metre to make, but the poem seems to ask for an ending something more like:
and how they lowed, impossible to still,
no sweet clover, no [other real attempt at relief],
no [other real attempt], [her actions ended].
which together would intimate concretely the repeated efforts of the abstract "unremitting care"--and indeed, deftly constructed, might end the poem just there, as one then imagines her <u>trying</u> and failing, trying and failing, to relieve the mother--this ungentle woman--and would be inclined--and allowed--to 'fill in' her feeling, simply and vividly, oneself.
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