The poem she posted today echoes in tone if not in content that of her quicksand poem.
While as short at the previous poem, this poem about compassion is much more structured, using parallel phrasing to give it power and impact.
Yet despite its brevity, it is incredibly complex, and creates a number of possible alternative interpretations, depending partly on for whom the poem is written.
My ego (my narcissistic self as she referred to me in an earlier poem) would like to think the poem is directed at me, and so like the poem about quicksand, offers a certain measure of condolence or compassion for a clearly defeated man.
But the poem may well also be directed at herself, about the idea of compassion or perhaps pain.
While the overtly it claims to be about compassion, in fact, the poem goes beyond both pain and compassion and may well allude of a philosophy of survival.
As with the quick sand poem, this poem seems to be offering advice, although less fatalistic.
The most important word in this poem is “it” that leads each stanza, brilliantly used to allow the poem to play off many possible meanings, a symbolic reference to any human condition. The poem is about control, about being able to stop something when you to it, or find a way to ease or reduce its impact, or perhaps go with the flow of it etc.
But more than just a negative, it is proposing a way of life, of having control over your own destiny. You can stop something, or you can take it in Zen-like to embrace it, or you can go with the flow rather than resisting it. You also have power to use it, control it, make it do what you need or want it to do.
The last lines of the poem add yet another level of complexity in a sense of noble defiance in that she is doing what she is doing against the advice of those around her and it taken as directed at me, she appears to be offering -- if not forgiveness which she said was impossible – but perhaps absolution, less that I should accept sinking as my fate, but instead offering hope of redemption, a strategy for survival. In this poem, she demonstrates a sense of compassion as if she understands just how powerless I’ve become, compassion she offers despite some around her who are opposed to it.
The poem is the antithesis of her poems of rage, showing a deeper and kinder side of her in her ability to rise above her own fear and rage to offer condolence, if not to me then – if the poem is basically talking to herself – then to show compassion to some wounded part of herself.
If the poem is directed to me, it is offering an alternative to forgiveness. It is directed at herself, then she is asking one part of herself to show compassion to another part of herself, giving herself a roadmap on out to survive, stopping what she wants stopped, easing the severity, flowing with the tide rather than against it, or most importantly, taking control of it (fear or pain or whatever) to make it do for her what she wants and needs.
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