Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud
The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash
with grey and beached by winter scenery,
pinched by the Peckham girl who calls me posh,
and boys who pull live crabs apart to see
me cry. And I am lost in that grim place
again, coat buttoned up as tight as grief.
Sea scours my nostrils, strict winds sand my face,
the clouds pile steel on steel with no relief.
Sent there to convalesce--my turnkeys, Sisters
of Rome, stone-faced as Colosseum arches--
I served a month in Stalag Kent, nursed blisters
in beetle shoes on two-by-two mute marches.
I close the jar, but nose and throat retain
an after-tang, the salt of swallowed pain.
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The title and the closing couplet frame a painful recollection. The octave gives us, understandably, a rush of disagreeable memories; the sestet then explains what the speaker was doing in such a place. "Awash with grey" seems to describe a state of despondency and a grim scene; "beached," however, seems more forced, although suggestive of lake shore and feelings of abandonment. I take it that "the Peckham girl" thought the speaker snooty; I recognize the tormenting boys from my own grammar-school days, but I have trouble reconciling live crabs with a sea which supports no life. Much in this poem is vivid -- "scours" in line 7, or "the salt of swallowed pain." A well-executed narrative sonnet.
[This message has been edited by Richard Wilbur (edited May 12, 2008).]
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