(Couples in the Voyer d’Argenson Park at Asnières)
A tiny stroked sky just a hint of yellow, skinny tree trunks but lush, lush are the leaves, and grass and other foliage behind three couples placed leisurely in the park celebrating the weather and couplehood. one couple walks on the grass her arm tucked under his. behind them a woman sits on the grass, nearby, her man reclines studying her face. you’ll want to gaze at the third couple: she sits on a bench, parasol leaning over left shoulder; he is standing, leaning into her, his hand on her knee, her hand on his hand, but he is not yet looking into her eyes, she is looking at his face, and the next moment, the moment we will not see, he will turn and kiss her mouth. moments later all the couples will ease out of the park to seek shelter from the late afternoon rain that at this point there is not even a hint of and make love.
Andrew Marvell’s carpe diem poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” features a ludicrous attempt to seduce a young woman. The poem’s clever idiocy rivals John Donne’s “The Flea.”
Introduction and Text of “To His Coy Mistress”
Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” consists of twenty-three riming couplets. The thematic arrangement of the three sections resembles the two premises and proposition of a syllogism that might be paraphrased as follows: if we had unlimited time, it would be fine to wait before we engage in sexual intercourse, but time is limited, so we should have at it now.
Andrew Marvell was writing in the 17th century, and at that time the term “mistress” did not carry the connotation of an extramarital sex partner that it does in modern American parlance. “Mistress” merely meant “woman” or “lady.”
Etymologically, the titles Mrs, Miss, and Ms all stem from that term. The woman in this poem is likely a virgin, and the speaker is a cad who wants to seduce her, much like the rascal speaking in John Donne’s “The Flea” or “The Apparition.”
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Commentary on “To His Coy Mistress”
In Andrew Marvell’s carpe diem poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker is attempting to seduce a young woman, using reasoning and logic similar to a syllogism.
First Premise: If Time Were Limitless
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate.
The speaker flings himself into his seduction drama, blurting out that both he and the young woman he wishes to defile will one day die, and therefore they should not wait to begin engaging in sexual intercourse.
The randy speaker then offers bizarre suggestions as to what they could do if they had more time: she could go searching for rubies beside the Ganges, while he would amble along grumbling still in England by the Humber.
The speaker then asserts that the woman could continue to decline his propositions for ages and ages, for example, until the followers of Judaism take up that newfangled Christianity. His “love,” meaning “lust,” could continue to grow, “Vaster than empires, and more slow.”
The speaker also could wait a “hundred years”; even “two hundred years” he could pass in admiring “each breast.” He could devote even “thirty thousand” years to the rest of her person, if they had time, and he admits that she would be worth every minute of it.
Second Premise: But Time Is Limited
But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.
Regrettably, such copious amounts of time are not allotted to them. Surely as they are living, they will surely be dying, unable to participate in the ways of the flesh.
He is so certain that he is such a smart fellow, and he knows what behavior is correct for himself and the object of his lust. The speaker then insults the woman’s intelligence and common sense, labeling her sensible stance on the issue “quaint.”
If he cannot take her maidenhead, then the “worms” will do so after she dies. Conveniently, the arrogant speaker omits any reference to the problems that could likely follow the indiscretion of such an assignation. He gleefully allows himself to be guided by his genitals, not his brain, and he has the audacity to ridicule her for using her mind.
Proposition: Thus, Now Is the Time
Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
For this speaker, driven by his nether region, his logic naturally results in sexual gratification. He envisions a future of fading beauty. He concludes that because of little time and the physical decaying of the body, they should not delay sexual experience.
The speaker unfortunately foists his own degenerate state upon the woman, insisting that she wants it as much as he does! Ancient ultimatum!
The speaker envisions their sexual act will be like “am’rous birds of prey.” He fantasizes their, “roll[ing] all [their] strength, and all / [Their] sweetness, up into one ball.” Furthermore, he insists that they should, “tear [their] pleasures with rough strife.”
This speaker does not just want sex, but he also desires the act to be violent, as he suggests this additional perversion in his final effusion, metaphorically heralding the sun that they cannot bid “stand still,” so they “will make him run.”
The comic effect of a running sun, like the male ejaculate down the leg, renders the piece floating somewhere on the edge of pornography.
We walked out that day to get some air, the conversation had left me not knowing if we were coming or going,
the trees are a comfort always. even if you held my hand you would not touch my heart you could not say my name your tongue forked my brain,
your eyes reflected the lush, my yellow moon face opened to you like the wildflowers expectant, holding back nothing offering up to you everything,
when you spoke, you seemed to address the trees, you said they would build a sturdy bed for you and your bride. if i could hide here, i would not feel the need to tell you that she will
crash as soon as she eyes you face to face, as soon as she knows what i have learned about your poisoned honey; she is sinking in kisses, you are prickling beneath your smooth lies popping like mushrooms.
Image created by ChatGPT inspired by the essay introduction
Immigration: The World’s Deep Existential Problem
The movement of peoples across national boundaries or “immigration” presents modern nations with a profound existential problematic question: How can a country welcome newcomers while preserving the principles that make its civilization worth joining?
While migration can enrich a society economically, intellectually, culturally, and spiritually, it may also become a serious political problem when newcomers—or influential movements within immigrant communities—reject the traditional constitutional principles of their adopted country. The challenge is not diversity itself, but the defense of a shared civic foundation.
Immigration and the Preservation of Civilization
A nation is more than a geographical territory or an economic arrangement. It is a community bound by laws, historical memories, and moral commitments. Western liberal democracies place individual liberty, freedom of speech, religious freedom, equality before the law, and personal independence among their foundational principles.
Movements that seek to replace these commitments with religious or ideological authority virtually with fail result in conflict that undermines social trust and democratic stability. The central distinction, therefore, must be between immigration per se and ideological incompatibility.
Immigrants are not a homogeneous population, and no religious community should be treated as a single political bloc. Contemporarily, the relevant concern is Islamism: the range of political movements that seek to organize public authority according to their interpretations of Islam. Islamist movements differ considerably, but those that subordinate individual rights to religious law present a genuine challenge to liberal democracy.
Freedom of Speech under Threat
Attitudes toward freedom of speech, an indispensable and most cherished feature of liberal democracies, illustrate the conflict. Western democracies protect the right to criticize governments, religions, and prevailing social conventions. Islamist extremists, by contrast, consistently treat criticism of Islam or depictions of its prophet as grounds for intimidation, subordination, and even murder.
Such violence does more than kill its immediate victims. It can produce self-censorship, weakening the freedom of everyone who fears speaking openly about controversial subjects.
France offers a particularly painful example. In October 2020, secondary-school teacher Samuel Paty, teacher at Collège du Bois-d’Aulne in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, France, was murdered after discussing freedom of expression and caricatures of religious figures during a lesson on civic values. (In this teacher’s memory, the school was officially renamed Collège Samuel Paty on March 14, 2025.)
His killing demonstrated the lethal consequences of extremist hostility toward open debate. The subsequent controversy surrounding secular education has also exposed the difficulty of defending the republic’s principles while protecting the religious liberty of individual citizens [1].
French secularism, known as laïcité, seeks to preserve a public sphere in which citizens participate as equals rather than as members of competing religious authorities. In September 2024, France’s Conseil d’État upheld the government’s prohibition on abaya-style garments in public schools, finding that the policy complied with existing legislation restricting conspicuous religious affiliation in those institutions.
The decision reflected a continuing struggle over the boundary between religious expression and the secular character of state education [2]. The issue is not that religious clothing automatically signifies extremism, nor that every dispute over religious practice threatens national survival.
The deeper question is whether public institutions can maintain common rules when religious activists challenge them. If schools cannot teach established curricula, teachers cannot discuss controversial subjects, or women and girls cannot make independent choices without intimidation, then the state’s promise of equal citizenship becomes increasingly fragile.
Women’s Equality and Individual Independence
Women’s equality presents another important test. Liberal democracies recognize women as independent legal persons, entitled to education, employment, property, political participation, and freedom from coercion.
Islamist movements that impose compulsory dress, restrict women’s mobility, subordinate wives to husbands, or deny women equal opportunities conflict with these commitments. Such practices deserve criticism wherever they occur, including within immigrant communities and established religious institutions.
Evidence nevertheless requires precision. Pew Research Center’s multinational survey found substantial variation among Muslims in their views on democracy, religious freedom, and women’s rights.
Many respondents supported democratic government and freedom of worship for people of other faiths, while traditional views of marital obedience remained widespread in several regions [3].
Religious Freedom and the Limits of Religious Authority
Freedom of religion also demands reciprocal protection. A liberal society must defend the right to worship for Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and others. However, Islamist extremists who seek to impose their religious ideology on others directly threaten the equality, individual liberty, and freedom of conscience that liberal democracies uphold.
A stark example is ISIS’s 2014 assault on the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq. United Nations investigators documented how ISIS fighters killed Yazidis, forcibly converted some captives, and abducted and sexually enslaved thousands of women and girls because of their religious identity [4].
These atrocities demonstrate what happens when extremists reject freedom of conscience and treat women as possessions rather than as equal human beings. Respect for peaceful religious belief must never prevent society from confronting extremist movements that use coercion and violence to suppress fundamental freedoms.
Radical Islamism and National Security
The United States faces a related security problem in the form of jihadist radicalization. Federal authorities have investigated numerous plots inspired by organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Such cases demonstrate that violent extremist ideology can threaten public safety even in a country whose constitutional protections provide extensive freedom to religious minorities. Security agencies must continue to distinguish actual threats from peaceful religious observance and political disagreement [5].
A recent example illustrates the continuing danger. In October 2026, the Associated Press reported that federal agents had thwarted an alleged plan by an 18-year-old American citizen to attack a Hmong cultural celebration at Minnesota’s Mall of America.
According to the report, the suspect had expressed interest in joining al-Shabab before turning toward a domestic attack. The case underscores the importance of identifying radicalization and investigating credible threats before violence occurs [6].
The relevant question is whether immigration systems can prevent extremists from entering, settling, organizing, or recruiting within the country. Where credible evidence identifies such threats, governments have a responsibility to act on them—through rigorous screening, intelligence sharing, surveillance of terrorist networks, and prosecution of criminal activity.
The danger lies not in ancestry but in ideology, organization, recruitment, and violence. Policy should therefore focus on identifying people who endorse or facilitate political violence, the networks that support them, and the institutional failures that allow those threats to take root.
The Danger of National Self-Destruction
The existential danger is ultimately institutional and moral. Governments that fail to enforce laws consistently, tolerate intimidation of teachers and critics, or abandon equal rights to appease ideological pressure cause citizens to lose confidence in their institutions.
Polarization and retaliatory politics can then deepen divisions. National decline is not an inevitable consequence of immigration, but decline becomes more plausible after a society loses the resolve to defend its fundamental principles.
A durable immigration policy should therefore combine humane treatment with clear civic expectations. Governments should conduct lawful security screening, enforce criminal law, protect freedom of conscience, support language and civic education, and insist that all residents respect constitutional rights.
They should oppose Islamist coercion even as they do not tolerate anti-religious discrimination. Integration succeeds when newcomers can retain peaceful cultural and religious identities while participating fully in a common civic order.
The world’s existential problem is not simply that people move across borders. It is that modern societies must reconcile openness with self-preservation, pluralism with solidarity, and compassion with the enforcement of common law.
A nation need not abandon its humanitarian obligations to defend its civilization. Its survival depends on making liberty universal, equality enforceable, and democratic institutions strong enough to withstand those who would replace individual freedom with ideological domination.
Vincent’sViewof Arles with Irises in the Foreground
To see as you do, Vincent, would give a soul a clearer heart: the trees that look like upside-down men, plunged headfirst into the earth to their waists, their leaves like women’s hair blown by the wind and the irises’ pouting lips parting for the butterflies and the bees,
the red roofs under which the harlots of Arles grind their tricks into dust, and the church tower remanding all eyes to look up at that troubled paint in the sky— those tiny strokes. your fingers, your brushes, and your burden of beauty.
Image a: T. S. Eliot – Ida Kar – National Portrait Gallery, London
T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” represents a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.
Introduction with Text of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
T. S. Eliot composed a little volume titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which under the influence of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, became Cats, one of the ten longest running musicals [1] on Broadway.
How does one reconcile the lavish and hilarious persona responsible for the likes of old possum and the cats with the gloomy, spiritually dry personality of J. Alfred Prufrock and TheWaste Land mentality? That conflation is somewhat like confusing a man with little education and travel experience for the writer of the Shakespearean canon [2].
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Reading by Anthony Hopkins
Commentary on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
T. S. Eliot is really a very funny poet. His works are taken way too seriously. A reader needs to think irony, satire, and sarcasm and then enjoy a few belly laughs when reading Eliot. And his character J. Alfred Prufrock offers one of the finest examples of Eliot’s humor, as he, at the same time, skewers the direction of art in the 20th century.
Prufrock Killed Poetry
The American humorist Garrison Keillor [3] has offered his experience with and opinion of “old Pru,” claiming that the poem is
a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers. This poem pretty much killed off the pleasure of poetry for millions of people who got dragged through it in high school.
Keillor and his ilk who learned to hate poetry because of being “dragged through it in high school” might benefit from revisiting the poem and considering it through a lens of irony brushed with satire and sarcasm.
For a more precise understanding of the poem, it is also important to realize that it is focusing on and providing a critique of the flaws of modernism, the movement that was having demoralizing effects on the art of poetry.
The ironic humor of the poem clearly rails against the angst-infused positions that were rendering poetry not only unintelligible but ultimately without literary value.
Who is J. Alfred Prufrock and what does he want?
Critics regularly note the ironic disjointedness in the title as a love song apparently sung by a man with a business-suit name. But they then descend into the maudlin angst of this poor pathetic creature, and ultimately they take the work as a criticism of modern society in general, instead of a criticism of the skewed direction of art.
Eliot was poking fun at such criticism and such stances. The poem itself is a mishmash of form, consisting of 131 lines separated into free-verse paragraphs (versagraphs), yet it has rime throughout, delivered in uneven rhythms.
The form itself makes fun of free-verse and phony erudition (the many allusions to classic works that seem so out of place) as it floats them down a stream-of-consciousness.
Opening Movement: The Anesthetized Patient
The first three lines set up the hilarious mood of the poem:
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table.
The first line sounds as if the speaker of the poem is inviting someone to go somewhere in the evening, perhaps a social gathering or just an outing with a lady friend; after all it is a “love song.”
But the reader is slammed in the face as the evening is described as a patient on an operating table being prepared for surgery. The romance of supposed “love song” has died by line three.
The speaker continues to mumble, describing the evening quite negatively, briefly mentioning one night stands in nasty hotels, disgusting eateries, and the boring streets that lead to boring places of ill-repute—yet all this leads on to “an overwhelming question.”
But then the speaker cuts off the thought by telling his listener not to bother asking what the “overwhelming question” is but instead says let’s just get going “and make our visit.” Now, it sounds as if the speaker and his companion are definitely going to a social gathering, maybe a dinner party.
But the dinner party never materializes, and it becomes quite apparent that the speaker is simply addressing himself, likely while looking at his face in a mirror. There is no companion; there is no evening engagement, just a musing voice that is making fun of all the modernist techniques that the poet is employing in the poem through this pathetic speaker.
The Italian Epigram: Professing an “Insidious Intent”
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
The epigram that opens the poem alerts the reader to the “insidious intent” of the speaker in the poem. The six lines feature a quotation from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII, 61–66). The following is a rough translation from the Italian of the epigram:
If I believed I was trying to bullshit someone who could return to the world, I would hold my tongue. But since no one ever lives to return to life again, at least so they say, I will spew forth whatever I please.
The following is an interpretive paraphrase of the Italian epigram:
if I thought such nonsense would really be foisted on the world, I would not concoct it, but since those who delve into the avant-garde poetry world have nothing to take back, I have deigned to let it fly
Modern Boredom: Vacuous Social Gatherings
The speaker describes the fog in the metaphorical likeness of a dog: it rubs its back and muzzle on the window-panes, and it “[l]icked its tongue into the corners of the evening.”
The speaker is concerned about social gatherings; he has often encountered them, and the lines “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” become a mantra.
And the line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” which follows his claim to have known all those bored people in offices, lounges, and evening affairs demonstrates the speaker’s awareness of his own boredom.
Floating Down the Stream: Tricky Man, Very Tricky Man
The speaker inserts telling images into his stream-of-consciousness descriptions of angst-filled scenes with outrageous images such as “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Another outlandish sight is “I grow old … I grow old … / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
And while these are famous lines often cited as showing the modern angst of Prufrock, they are quite humorous when one realizes that the speaker is making fun of the serious tone that critics will take regarding the style and highly allusive nature of the poem. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock has tricked many readers with his dry, spiritually destitute personality.
Tricked by Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock
The radio star Garrison Keillor blames “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for “kill[ing] off the pleasure of poetry.” Keillor complains that the poem is “a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers.”
It is somewhat puzzling that Keillor, whose own banter attempts to lace humor with reportage, does not see the humor in “Old Pru.” Robert Frost asserted that his poem “The Road Not Taken” was “a tricky poem—a very tricky poem.”
However, many other Frostian poems have turned out to be quite tricky as well. And T. S. Eliot became a master at composing some of the trickiest poems to grace the poetry world.
The Character of J. Alfred Prufrock
The speaker of T. S. Eliot’s most widely anthologized classic is J. Alfred Prufrock himself, and his personality is the theme of the poem; he is a ridiculous character, utterly laughable. As Roger Mitchell [4] has explained,
[Prufock] is the Representative Man of early Modernism. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded (many have said impotent), ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism.
In other words, “old Pru” is merely a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.
Failure to Read Closely
Keillor refers to the following lines: “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” and “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?” The former radio personality has been tricked by Eliot’s poem, and in Keillor’s comment about the poem, two assertions demonstrate his misunderstanding.
The first false assertion about the poem is that it is a “small, dark mopefest of a poem”: this is a false assertion because the poem is too funny to be a “dark mopefest,” plus it is really a longer poem than most lyrics; thus the descriptor “small” remains inaccurate.
The second false assertion is that, “old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers”: while “old Pru” does ask if he dares “eat a peach,” he does not question whether he will roll up his trousers.
These two false assertions suggest the reason that Keillor has been tricked by the poem; he simply has not read it carefully and closely enough, and likely his high school teacher was not adept at comprehending and teaching poetry.
Other Funny Lines
The opening of the poem, at first, may simply seem startling, but upon further study, the reader can see the hilarity in the absurdity of “the evening [ ] spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.” The juxtaposition of “evening/sky” and “etherized patient/table” is just so ludicrous that it is laughable.
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”: fog becomes a cat or a dog, and the speaker likes that metaphor so well that he repeats it in the next stanza. Fog as a dog jumps like a frog into the mind as one encounters those lines.
A close consideration of the lines, “To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’ / Time to turn back and descend the stair, / With a bald spot in the middle of my hair,” reveals again the absurdity of taking Keillor’s criticism seriously.
The jarring juxtaposition of a pathetic creature double questioning his traipsing down a stairway and then hastening to the bald spot in his pate cannot help but elicit a laugh, provided the reader/listener is paying close attention.
While Prufrock would be a sympathetic character were he less pitiful, he becomes a caricature, who instead of drawing sympathy draws derision from the reader. Perhaps by tweaking their reading a bit and by reading closer, Keillor and other casual readers could learn to enjoy the misadventures of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The Maud Gonne Rescue in W. B. Yeats’ “Among School Children”
As is is case with several of Yeats poems, “Among School Children” has suffered a misreading that defeats the poem’s actual achievement: by reading into the poem the presence of Maud Gonne, critics have misinterpreted the mental quirkiness of an aging “public smiling man”—and thus the human mind universally.
What the Poem Actually Says
The conventional reading of W. B. Yeats’ “Among School Children” places Maud Gonne at the center of the poem’s middle stanzas. According to this interpretation, the sixty-year-old Yeats, visiting a school, looks at the children and remembers Gonne as a girl.
His thoughts then move through youth, beauty, sexual love, motherhood, aging, philosophy, and finally the famous question of whether the dancer can be separated from the dance.
This reading is so familiar that it can seem to be what the poem itself says. It is not. Maud Gonne is never named, described, recalled, or represented in the poem. She enters through biographical knowledge about Yeats and is then read back into the text.
Yeats did tell Gonne in a June 1928 letter that she would find “a reference to your self” in the poem, but he did not say that she was the child before him, the woman in the Ledaean fantasy, or the subject of a remembered episode [1].
That distinction is crucial. A private authorial reference is not the same thing as a figure represented in the poem. The poem itself gives us a schoolroom, children, a nun, a sixty-year-old “smiling public man,” a Ledaean fantasy, and the psychological transformation of what the speaker sees.
The first stanza establishes the dramatic situation precisely. The speaker enters “the long schoolroom,” encounters the children, and notices that their eyes stare at a “sixty-year-old smiling public man.”
There is no Maud Gonne. The phrase “smiling public man” is important because it establishes a distinction between the speaker’s public identity and his private mind. He is not simply an old poet remembering his youth; he is a public figure performing a role before an audience.
The next stanza takes us into that private mind. He says, “I dream of a Ledaean body,” immediately invoking the myth of Leda, without any reference that would evoke Gonne. The passage turns toward sexual union and generation, imagining two natures blended into one. Again, there is no Maud Gonne, despite the fact that Yeats was, in fact, sexually attracted to Gonne.
It is at this point that the conventional interpretation begins to go wrong. The critic knows that Gonne was Yeats’ great love, knows that Yeats wrote to her about a reference to herself, sees the Ledaean woman, and supplies Gonne as her identity. But the poem does not make that identification. The poem’s movement is from Leda to the child, not from Gonne to the child.
The Child Who Is Actually There
The third stanza makes the distinction even clearer. Thinking about the Ledaean story, the speaker looks at “one child or t’other there” and wonders whether “she stood so at that age.” The children are physically present in the schoolroom, while the imagined woman is being projected onto the child by faulty critical analysis.
Then comes the psychological center of the passage: “And thereupon my heart is driven wild: / She stands before me as a living child.” The conventional reading tends to make this mean that Gonne, remembered as a young girl, suddenly appears vividly to Yeats’ imagination. But the poem does not say that. It says that she stands before him as a living child.
The Ledaean woman has become imaginatively present through the child who is physically standing before him. The child has not become Gonne. Rather, the speaker’s imagination has overlaid the present child with the woman of the Ledaean fantasy.
That distinction is exactly what the Gonne interpretation suppresses. Once Gonne is inserted, the psychological event becomes familiar and safe: an aging man looks at children, remembers the girl he once loved, feels the pain of lost youth, and moves toward a contemplative musing on aging.
But the actual poem is stranger. The speaker is looking at a child while imagining Leda; his “heart is driven wild”; and he experiences the imagined woman as a “living child.” The poem is dramatizing the activity of the speaker’s mind in the presence of an actual child. Maud Gonne is not necessary to explain it, excerpt to attempt to explain away what dirty minds might tend to supply.
How Gonne Gets into the Poem
The question, then, is how Maud Gonne became so firmly established in criticism. The answer is biographical. Yeats’ letter gives critics a legitimate reason to suspect that Gonne is somehow being alluded to, and that suspicion has gradually hardened into interpretive certainty.
But there is a substantial difference between saying that Yeats privately intended Gonne as a reference and saying that the poem represents him remembering Gonne as a girl. The first statement is supported by the letter; the second must be demonstrated from the poem itself.
Yeats’ wording is notably restrained. He does not tell Gonne that she is the woman in stanza II or the child in stanza III. He does not say that the poem describes her childhood or that the schoolchildren reminded him of her. He says only that she will find “a reference to your self.”
A reference can be oblique, private, symbolic, or embedded in an image without turning the person referenced into the poem’s subject. The critical error occurs when a reference is converted into a presence and then the presence is treated as though the poem itself had named it.
Pacey’s “Hub”
Desmond Pacey provides a particularly useful example. Pacey writes that “The first stanza is the hub of the wheel; the succeeding stanzas are spokes radiating from this hub.” He also describes the poem as a series of “observations, memories, and meditations” upon finding himself “among a class of schoolchildren” [2].
This distinction offers an important insight. The schoolroom is not merely the place where the poem begins and then disappears. It is the hub from which the later reflections radiate. The children remain part of the dramatic situation even when the speaker’s thoughts move into myth, memory, philosophy, and speculation about generation.
Yet Pacey then says, “Stanzas II to IV relate to the particular case of Maud Gonne, who was once a child like these but is now an ageing woman.” At this point, the critical displacement occurs. Pacey correctly identifies the schoolroom as the poem’s hub, but then relocates the central psychological action into Gonne’s biography.
The poem itself does not do that. The speaker looks at “one child or t’other there”; his heart is “driven wild”; and he sees a “living child.” Pacey’s identification of Gonne turns that child into a remembered historical person, but the poem never makes that transformation.
The “Smiling Public Man”
At this point in he poem, the Gonne interpretation most seriously obscures the actual event along with its meaning. The speaker begins as “a sixty-year-old smiling public man.” He then enters a private mental world in which he dreams of Leda, looks at a child, and experiences an intense emotional response.
Then he says: “Her present image floats into the mind—” and immediately interrupts himself: “I … had pretty plumage once—enough of that, / Better to smile on all that smile, and show / There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.”
The psychological sequence is coherent without Gonne: public man – private fantasy – child – emotional disturbance – self-interruption – return to public performance. The Gonne reading replaces the actual sequence with a safer sequence: public man – memory of young Gonne – nostalgia – recognition of aging.
The second sequence may be biographically plausible, but it is not what the poem explicitly represents. “Enough of that” sounds like an act of self-interruption. The speaker has allowed his imagination to go somewhere he does not wish to pursue, at least in his public role, and thus he deliberately restores his socially appropriate face.
The poem does not say that the speaker intends to do anything to the child. The important fact is psychological: an image arises in his mind, becomes disturbingly immediate, produces an intense emotional response, and is then suppressed. That ambiguity is precisely what the Gonne interpretation removes.
Generation Rather Than Gonne
The fifth stanza naturally continues the poem’s concern with the child. The speaker asks what youthful mother, with “a shape upon her lap,” could have imagined that the child she bore would one day become an aged person.
The poem has moved from the Ledaean fantasy to generation, from generation to motherhood, and from motherhood to aging. Nothing in this movement requires a memory of Maud Gonne.
The child before the speaker represents the beginning of the process whose end he himself embodies at sixty. The poem can therefore move directly from the living child to the aging man without inserting a remembered woman from his past between them.
The Gonne reading narrows this universal contemplative musing into a biographical one. Instead of seeing the child as the immediate occasion for reflections on generation and aging, the critic turns the child into a disguised portrait of Gonne.
Philosophy Does Not Rescue the Speaker
The sixth stanza introduces Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, but the philosophers do not restore the poem to Maud Gonne. They appear because the speaker is trying to understand the problems that have emerged from his encounter with the children: body and mind, youth and age, generation and identity.
Even the philosophers are rendered bodily. Pythagoras is “golden-thighed,” Aristotle “played the taws,” and the stanza ends with the philosophers reduced to “Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.”
The movement is therefore not from Gonne to philosophy. It is from the child and the speaker’s experience of the child toward increasingly abstract attempts to understand human existence. Yet those abstractions repeatedly collapse back into bodies. The philosophers become scarecrows. The body remains inescapable.
The seventh stanza continues the same line of thought when it says, “Both nuns and mothers worship images.” The poem then speaks of “Presences” known through “passion, piety or affection” and finally calls them “self-born mockers of man’s enterprise.”
These images are relevant to the speaker’s experience because his own mind has produced an image that he has not entirely chosen. The Ledaean figure enters his consciousness, becomes entangled with the child before him, and generates an emotional response that he then attempts to suppress.
The phrase “self-born” is especially suggestive. The poem has become increasingly concerned with images produced within human consciousness: religious images, maternal images, erotic images, memories, fantasies, and philosophical constructions.
The speaker’s Ledaean fantasy belongs to this same world of internally generated “Presences.” His problem is not that he cannot remember Gonne clearly enough; it is that he cannot entirely control what his own imagination produces.
The Final Stanza
The final stanza is often treated as the poem’s philosophical resolution, but its famous conclusion is actually a question: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” The question follows naturally from everything that has preceded it.
Throughout the poem, the speaker has attempted, consciously or unconsciously, to distinguish past from present, image from reality, body from mind, public identity from private thought, and youth from age. Yet these categories repeatedly become entangled.
Leda and the child become entangled. The child and the old man are joined through generation. The philosophers become bodies. The public man cannot escape the private mind. The final question therefore does not require Maud Gonne. It grows naturally from the poem’s sustained examination of the inseparability of embodied existence and consciousness.
The Critical Insertion of Gonne
The conventional Gonne interpretation does something more consequential than merely emphasizing Yeats’ biography. It inserts a person into the poem who is not represented there and then uses that person to explain away the psychological event the poem actually represents.
Once Gonne has been inserted, the child can be interpreted as Gonne’s younger self, the Ledaean fantasy as a memory of Gonne’s beauty, the speaker’s emotional disturbance as nostalgia, and “enough of that” as a conventional recognition of old age.
But none of these steps is required by the poem. They depend upon first placing Gonne into it. That makes the reasoning circular. Critics begin with the biographical knowledge that Yeats loved Gonne and that he told her she would recognize herself in the poem.
They then interpret the Ledaean woman as Gonne, interpret the child as Gonne, and finally point to the resulting interpretation as evidence that Gonne must have been the poem’s subject. The biographical premise has been transformed into the textual conclusion.
The proper direction of interpretation should be reversed. Begin with what the poem actually gives us: a public man among schoolchildren; a Ledaean dream; a child; an intense emotional reaction; an image becoming present; a sudden “enough of that”; and a return to the public smile. Only after establishing that sequence should we ask whether a private biographical allusion may lie behind it.
The Direction of the Poem
The decisive difference can therefore be stated simply: The poem moves from Leda to the child, whereas conventional criticism makes it move from Gonne to the child. That reversal is not a harmless change of emphasis.
Leda is explicitly present in the poem; Gonne is not. The child is explicitly present; Gonne is not. The speaker’s heart is explicitly “driven wild”; a nostalgic recollection of Gonne is not. The speaker explicitly says “enough of that”; he does not say that he has had enough of remembering Gonne. He is expressing his dismay at the thoughts that have assailed him against he wishes.
Once these facts control the reading, the poem’s psychological structure becomes clearer. The “smiling public man” is the man the children see, but the poem takes us inside his mind and shows us a fantasy that becomes unexpectedly immediate.
The child remains physically present while the speaker’s imagination overlays her with the Ledaean woman. His response becomes intense enough that he interrupts himself and returns to the socially acceptable smile.
The subsequent musing on generation, aging, philosophy, and the inseparability of dancer and dance develops from that experience rather than from a recollection of Maud Gonne. As a matter of fact, the recollection of Gonne would not require such a question of identifying the dancer and the dance.
Do Not Put Gonne Where Yeats Put the Child
The strongest evidence for putting Maud Gonne into “Among School Children” is Yeats’ own letter, and that evidence should not be ignored. But the letter says only that Gonne would find “a reference to your self.”
It does not say that she is the child, that she is Leda, that the speaker is remembering her, or that the poem describes their youthful relationship. Those are later critical constructions. The poem itself never identifies Gonne, never names her, never narrates a memory of her, and never gives the speaker a reason to be thinking about her.
What the poem actually gives us is much more specific: a sixty-year-old “smiling public man” enters a schoolroom; encounters children; dreams of a Ledaean body; looks at “one child or t’other there”; feels his heart “driven wild”; sees the woman of his imagination standing before him “as a living child”; allows her image to “float into the mind”; remembers his own “pretty plumage”; and then says “enough of that.” He returns to smiling and presents himself as an “old scarecrow.”
The poem subsequently moves through generation, aging, philosophy, religious, and emotional images, and finally the question of whether dancer and dance can be separated. That sequence follows a continuous psychological and philosophical movement. Maud Gonne is not needed anywhere within it; her presence actually dismisses the very important question of distinguishing the dancer from the dance.
The conventional interpretation therefore gets the crucial passage backwards. The poem does not recall Maud Gonne; the critic recalls Maud Gonne and then attributes that recollection to the speaker. In doing so, criticism displaces the child who is actually there and replaces the speaker’s disturbing Ledaean fantasy with a much more manageable memory of a beloved woman.
The task is not to deny that Yeats privately associated Gonne with the poem. It is to refuse to let that private association override the poem’s dramatic facts. Gonne may exist in the history surrounding the poem; she does not exist in its represented scene.
The child does. Leda does. The speaker’s “wild” heart does. The command “enough of that” does. The smiling public man does. And the tension between that public man and the mind operating beneath his public smile is the psychological problem from which the rest of the poem develops.
Maud Gonne is not the hidden answer to the poem. She is the critic’s answer to a problem the poem never asks us to solve by naming her. The poem asks us instead to watch what happens inside the mind of the man who stands among the children [3]—and then to ask, with him, whether we can ever finally distinguish the dancer from the dance, this is, the thoughts that may arise in the mind unbidden.
Who is that man walking between the white tulips Carrying a rifle? we will hunker down out of sight Until he has passed. he will probably disappear beyond That cottage in a moment and then we can pull up close To the tulips and watch their lips cup the bees. you Will say my lips are the color of the frosty pinks, and I Will say your eyes match the dreamy blues. someday, I tell you, I will have a dress like those golden-hues and You will have a shirt as delicious as the peach-blush. You tell me that your mother grows beautiful flowers, But she has never been able to cultivate a healthy African violet, so I say, let’s go back into the house And I pick one out for her. you take her the plant. And leave me contemplating the painting. years Of contemplating and many poems later I study the Flower Beds in Holland and wonder About the African violet in your mother’s house.
Image: Retouched by Grok photo of Vachel Lindsay – Original at internetpoem.Com
Vachel Lindsay’s “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight’’
One of Vachel Lindsay’s most noted poems focuses Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth American president. In this elegy, Lincoln strolls about “at Midnight” contemplating the tragedy of nations being in on the brink of a world war. The Civil War president wonders therefore about his own legacy.
Introduction and Text of “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight’’
Vachel Lindsay’s father was a physician, who urged his son to study medicine, but the son discovered that he did not want to be a doctor. He dropped out of Hiram College and studied for a time at the Chicago Art Institute and later at the New York School of Art.
While in New York, Lindsay started poetry writing. He would print out copies of his poems and sell them on the street. He enjoyed a fairly high level of recognition for his writing, and particularly for his performances of his works. He believed that poetry was to be heard more than read, and his lively concerts brought him a wide audience.
One of his most noted poems focuses on the sixteenth president of the United States. Titled “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” with the subtitle “In Springfield, Illinois,” the poem consists of eight stanzas each with the rime scheme ABCB and separates into four movements.
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us:—as in times before! And we who toss and lie awake for long Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? Too many peasants fight, they know not why, Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free; The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth, Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again?
Image b: Abraham Lincoln – Civil War Talk -Daguerreotype image of Abraham Lincoln – earliest known photograph – 1846 – by Nicholas H. Shepherd
Commentary on “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight’’
One of Vachel Lindsay’s most noted poems takes as its subject the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, likely the most beloved president of all forty-five presidents.
(As of 2024, there have been a total of 45 US presidents. Grover Cleveland had two non-consecutive presidencies, #22 and #24, and after the 2024 presidential election Donald Trump has repeated that feat as #45 and #47; thus while there have been 47 presidencies, there have been only 45 presidents.)
First Movement: Reporting a Portentous Event
It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
In the opening stanza, the speaker declares that “a mourning figure walks” near the courthouse, and this is a “portentous” event that needs to be reported.
In the second stanza, the speaker enumerates other places where the figure has been seen walking: by the home where the figure once lived and where his children played, in the market place “on the well-worn stones.” And he “stalks until the dawn-stars burn away,” thus the title Lincoln “walks at midnight.”
Second Movement: Worries and Restless Roused from the Grave
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us:—as in times before! And we who toss and lie awake for long Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
The third stanza describes the figure’s appearance: bronze, lank, wearing a black suit and top-hat. These characteristics, the speaker claims, “make him the quaint great figure that men love.” And he adds that the figure is “The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.” This description makes it quite clear that the figure is Lincoln.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker surmises that Lincoln is worried and restless and cannot remain in his grave; he has to come join the other people of the town who also “toss and lie awake.” And because the restless living people are kept awake by worries, they see the long dead figure walking among them.
Third Movement: Concerned with World Conditions
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? Too many peasants fight, they know not why, Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
The speaker reckons that the president is worried and unable to sleep because he is cogitating over world conditions. Lincoln is likely thinking about “men and kings,” and he is distressed about the struggling poor people of the world and the “sins of all the war-lords.”
Lincoln paces in the town at midnight, with a load of worries that he knows are bothering this fellow citizens. The problems of the world he seems to carry on his own shoulders, including all the “folly and the pain.”
Fourth Movement: A Question of Peace
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free; The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth, Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again?
In the final two stanzas, the speaker makes the startling claim that Lincoln will not be able to rest until peace comes to the world: until Europe is free, and people wise up and bring long-lasting peace the world over “to Cornland, Alp, and Sea.”
The speaker claims that Lincoln remains sorrowful because kings are still murdering, and all of his own former earthy endeavors seem to be “in vain.” He then concludes with the question about who will finally be the one to bring about peace on this earth, so that Abraham Lincoln’s soul may be at rest and his body lie “sleep[ing] upon his hill again?”
Image c: Retouched photo by Grok and Gemini of Vachel Lindsay – Original at Alchetron
How the sun rings The top of his head Like a giant solid halo. The seed bag slung Over his right shoulder. How his face tilts down As his sowing arm Swings out, open hand Letting loose the seeds But where are the seeds? You can’t distinguish them From the other paint drops In the field. and what about Other parts of this field That is so neatly sectioned off? But it’s too hard to tell if They are planted & if planted What they are planted in. But never mind, Let’s have another beer And concentrate on that sun, That setting sun is important, After all, vincent called it, Sower with Setting Sun. I chose to call my poem “The Planter” but i too feel That the sun is important. The sun has painted the sky A golden hue. A naked tree looms In front of the planter, A dying tree. His house sits back Off to the left Of the fields, A long walk, He is getting tired, And as soon as the sun Sinks behind that blue line, He will have relieved himself Of all his seeds And head home to supper.
