This is a beautifully elusive poem, Mark. As others have remarked, it leaves the reader interesting work to do.
The first stanza leaves open the question of what it is that is imminent. It does this in at least four ways. It warns us, first, that the imminent event is no more than a rumour. Secondly, it offers two examples to illustrate the kind of thing that has been rumoured. Thirdly, it indicates (in “perhaps”) that these are only two examples out of what might be a longer list of possibilities. Finally, therefore, it leaves the speaker (and us the readers) to speculate about what such other possibilities might be – which puts us in the position of those who first spread the rumour.
In the second stanza, the speaker initiates his own version of the thing-that-is-about-to-be – except it has already happened but not been noticed. That is, the speaker, still without being able to say what the thing-that-is-about-to-be actually is, imagines it as being in the past. He goes on to invent the scene in which a quasi-parental figure (troped ambiguously, and with an edge of menace, as an “It”) has “crept into the room like Christmas Eve”, where “like Christmas Eve” at first seems to be a periphrasis for “as if on Christmas Eve” but in fact says that the “It” that creeps in is an event, not a person. And what is the significance of the smile, and of the walking backwards? As if leaving the presence of a dignitary? As if taking special care not to disturb the somnolent or sleeping person? And whose childhood do the songs concern? The childhood of the sleeper (who might therefore – but not necessarily – be an adult)? Or the singer? And what does the singing of such songs suggest about whatever it is that the sleeper is not yet “ready” for? Are the songs offered as a comfort? If so, despite the reference in the first stanza to “motley … apples and wooden toys”, the thing that has already arrived but not yet been observed sounds not at all comfortable.
It is not hard – it is perhaps tempting – to begin to imagine a biographical (an autobiographical) back-story for the poem – for example, a story concerning an absent and intermittently returning parent, one that would handily go some way towards “explaining” the poem’s shifts and ambiguities. Indeed, at some level, it may be that a “back-story” of this kind is what the poem is “really about”. But, as it stands, such a naturalistic approach is at every turn defeated by the poem’s skilfully in-built evasions and misdirections – which is one of the main things that makes it so intriguing and worthwhile.
I would add, more briefly, that it also seems to me beautifully cadenced in its interweaving of line and syntax, and a rhythm that swerves towards and away from strict metre in a most expressive manner.
Fine poem, Mark!
Clive
|