Big Al
02-12-2009, 09:15 PM
FROM
"Journey to the Place of Ghosts" by Jay Wright
Death knocks all night at my door.
The soul answers,
and runs from the water in my throat.
Water will sustain me when I climb
the steep hill
that leads to a now familiar place.
I began, even as a child, to learn water's order,
and, as I grew intact, the feel of its warmth
in a new sponge, of its weight in a virgin towel.
I have earned my wine in another's misery,
when rum bathed a sealed throat
and cast its seal on the ground.
I will be bound, to the one who leads me away,
by the ornaments on my wrists, the gold dust
in my ears, below my eye and tied to my
loincloth in a leather pouch.
They dress me now in my best cloth,
and fold my hands, adorned with silk,
against my left cheek.
Gold lies with me on my left side.
Gold has become the color of distance,
and of your sorrow.
....
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171456
I find this poem's imagery absolutely striking, but ultimately I do not understand its importance or symbolic meaning. Can anybody shed some light on the more esoteric passages of this poem?
"Journey to the Place of Ghosts" by Jay Wright
Death knocks all night at my door.
The soul answers,
and runs from the water in my throat.
Water will sustain me when I climb
the steep hill
that leads to a now familiar place.
I began, even as a child, to learn water's order,
and, as I grew intact, the feel of its warmth
in a new sponge, of its weight in a virgin towel.
I have earned my wine in another's misery,
when rum bathed a sealed throat
and cast its seal on the ground.
I will be bound, to the one who leads me away,
by the ornaments on my wrists, the gold dust
in my ears, below my eye and tied to my
loincloth in a leather pouch.
They dress me now in my best cloth,
and fold my hands, adorned with silk,
against my left cheek.
Gold lies with me on my left side.
Gold has become the color of distance,
and of your sorrow.
....
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171456
I find this poem's imagery absolutely striking, but ultimately I do not understand its importance or symbolic meaning. Can anybody shed some light on the more esoteric passages of this poem?