Poetry Notes

This poem was written about the death of a poet in Iraq. Due to the strongly charged political emotions surrounding the war in Iraq, I chose to not name that country nor restrict the piece to any one time period; it hangs in the air and retains its relevancy regardless of when it is read. The opening lines:

In the dustbin of the world

The poet lies bleeding

simply sets the death scene in a desert. The second stanza discusses the armed conflict around the poet. He is watching bombs explode around him, angry in the knowledge that wherever the bombs fall, death death will follow.

Railing against the light

Against the night-blooming poison

Stealing sacred dreams

And dew-fresh flowers.

He considers the people being bombed to be innocent; he sees them as having 'sacred dreams', and 'dew-fresh flowers' is a reference to the children that are dying, as children always die when adults choose to fight. The third stanza discusses how the poet's participation in the conflict have affected him. He sees his hands as 'foreign things', and his mind is 'a maze of menace'; he is grappling with the fact that his participation in the conflict has caused death as well. The stand alone line:

He lost his words to the wind

is in reference to what he has become. This man was a poet, a scholar, a gentle and loving man in every way. He has entered this conflict and become a soldier, losing touch with that softer side of himself. The view point of the poem pulls away in the next stanza:

The moon judges him coldly,

A pencil shaded figure

Vomiting black ink.

Here we find the poet mortally wounded. In darkened light, blood looks black, so for the image of the poet vomiting blood moments before death I chose to pull the shading of this stanza into a black and white feel. The poet is vomiting more than blood in this stanza; the last line 'vomiting black ink' is in reference to him losing his soul, that last bit left of the poet. The very last line of the poem, 'only the dust remains' was written to evoke an image of the desert existing after the death of the poet, after the conflict ends, and after all who are involved are dead and gone.