1697: Goodbye in Slow Motion with Those Trees Waving Back | Alexander Long

[exceptindreams]

"Goodbye in Slow Motion with Those Trees Waving Back"
Alexander Long

As if these words could alter wind's lucid course
And make the trees wave hello again;

As if the wind had something new to bless,
Confess; that, finally, today's losses were palpable, explicable

Even; as if there were a reason for this self-pity
To descend again like shade

Comments

[animaltime]

Poems that rely this heavily on simile fascinate me. They're so complicated. The more-straightforward interpretation would be that each time the speaker says "as if" she means that "if only it were actually like that; unfortunately it's not." But the sheer mention of what she is negating by saying "as if" before it makes me wonder if she's implying that we go back and forth between the poles of each of each pair of conditions she lists. You don't say something not to say it, right? It's like the speaker is making all these Freudian slips.