Help analyzing two poems

[scampton]

Here is what I have to do. The passage of time and the changes it brings could be said to be a theme of both poems listed below. I need to write an analysis of each poem analyzing the importance of this theme and I also have to use details , specific words and lines that relate to the passage of time and its effects.

THE FUNERAL
After many snows I was home again
Time had whittles down to mere hills
The great mountains of my childhood
Raging rivers I once swam trickled now like gentle streams
And the wide road curving on to China or Kansas City or perhaps Calcutta
Had withered to a crooked path of dust
Ending abruptly at the county burying ground
Only the giant who was my father remained the same.
A hundred strong men strained beneath his coffin
When they bore him to his grave.

Desmet, Idaho March 1969

At my father's wake,
The old people knew me
Though I knew them not.
And spoke to me
In our tribe;s Ancient tongue
Ignoring
The fact that I don't speak
the language
and so
I listened
As if understood
What it was all about
And
Oh
How it stirred me
To hear again
That strange softly flowing
Native tongue
So familiar to
My childhood ear.


Thanks for the help.