Life-and-Destruction                                                            Page 18

The sight of the flame-tree is a shock, as if blood were to be seen flowing in a

dry, dead landscape. It "leaps out this bush of blood." It does not suddenly

transform the scene of devastation, it exists inside it. The "scarlet breath-

flows in the midst of degradation. The song of the earth, from the torn mouth

is still "made flesh/ though the singer dies." And the tree, though a "fountain of

hot joy", is itself a "living ghost of death." In the most vibrantly alive thing the

"ghost of death" is present. The poem ends with this absent presence not

shifting its gaze onto joy, delight and desire to the exclusion of the "wrecked

skull".

“Dry Storm" describes lush mountain forests from whose damp richness clouds

form. But they are clouds that mean ill. They look like carriers of life but they

are barren. Beneath them the earth grows "dry, ready to burn." There is a

restlessness in the interconnectedness of everything in creation. The clouds

that may bring life now bring lightning and threat of fire. A similar theme is

found in "Destruction" where a poet looks for love and finds "the wolf, the

lion, the sword, the stormy sea."

"A Child's Nightmare" sees the "holy image" not only dwelling in us but raging

in us, like a "stormy sea". Earth is "bodied in beast and man and bird" and she

“seeks" vision and fear and chaos together with the "shaping Word" The image

of earth actively seeking such things as fear and chaos emphasises their

interconnectedness with the "Shaping Word". We who tread the paths of earth

hold ecstasy and nightmare both."

The snake-slough of "Snakeskin On A Gate" is chilling to the touch and

ominous in its threat of a "coil of poisonous dark" waiting somewhere "in the

pools of shade." But when this enemy is at last discovered he is stretched out

in the sun, shining like a jewel and showing no sign of fear, thus begging the

question of fear in the one who approaches. The poem is set in "a time of life

like January, double-faced month of change." Using a symbol of the constant

renewal of life, the poem does a cunning about face on fear of the dangerous

"poisonous dark", to look instead for change and renewal. These may be found

somewhere in the "neither/nor" of life and decay symbolised in the shed skin.