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Hix...please help me! This poem makes me so confused. To be honest, my ability of poetry is quite bad. Who can help me get the main point of this poem? I guess it tells us something about the meaning of "to live", but I'm really not sure.
Continuing to live -- that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries --
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise --
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
I will take a shot at it . Life is what it is. In other words, We make our choices.We decide if were happy or not.Our choices is the only thing we can control,Soooo life is what it is,its in our head,Positive or negative.. Im sure i will be straightened out,thats ok its just a quess...........YG ps.It,s not a very uplifting is it? (the poem that is)
Continuing to live -- that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries --
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
That continuing is losing: This clearly leads into the next verse where reference is made the various losses that come with old age. Each day of continuing brings more losses; each say is a diminution of the day before, a ritualized, that is, repeating set of habits that lead to death, loss, degradation.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise --
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.
Living is a game, but death, our adversary, like chess, is our ultimate checkmate. With poker you would at least have a chance.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
An interesting verse. Having walked the length of your mind, that is, finished with your thoughts for good, you can see very clearly all that you have accomplished, thought and done. The term "command" refers to the mind's function to subsume or, to borrow from Levinas, totalize what is laid before it. The mind tends to be solipsistic, especially, tough, when death is nearing. One becomes self absorbed with the meaning of one's personal history and the value of it. Others, their problems, the worldly issues in the news yield to the urgency and immediacy of death.
And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
This notion of blind impress is important and disputable. Is it a reference to some metaphysical intimation that works from behind the enterprise of a lived life? Is it a kind of old age intimation of immortality? Or is it simply the gathered meaning of all that has gone before, suggesting something completed and whole only. Think as you will on this, it is only half identified, and whatever it is that suggests itself is blind, blind because it does not see you, as a god would see a soul, but its impress has, or appears to have, Promise. But alas:
On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
Why green? Suggestive of something vital and promising. Ironic to put this here, in this chess game that no ones wins. It is ironic, and that's life, if you will: The moment we start to consider our death because death is upon us, we begin a novel introspection,we question as if for the first time, and first time events possess possibilities. But in review, we are not given the grand consummation of a spent and labored life. We are alone, dying. We die alone, alone with our thoughts.
This is the heart of the novelty: We cannot fill this death as we filled life by doing more, extending our lading list to one more business deal, one more purchase, one more conversation (notice that a lading list alludes to cargo, freight, something to be discarded, abandoned.
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. Life is what it is. In other words, We make our choices.We decide if were happy or not.Our choices is the only thing we can control,Soooo life is what it is,its in our head,Positive or negative.. Im sure i will be straightened out,thats ok its just a quess...........YG ps.It,s not a very uplifting is it? (the poem that is)
