This poem, surely a
serious one with complications, is undoubtedly very tough for the readers with
some single interpretation to carry on. One can say it draws a picture of
prostitution; someone can figure it out as the love story of the poet, which
was a failure. Moreover, some new interpretations may come into play too.
However, to summarize the poem as a whole with
some definite idea is difficult. Still, if you read the poem carefully, you
will come through the ideas of faith, revelation, illusion, and disillusion
etc. too. The poet describes of a night spent with someone in a place where
there are other couples too. (It might lead a mind to think of some brothel.)
Moreover, other couples have hostile eyes for this couple which poet forms with
his beloved/partner. The poet and his beloved/partner are making love and the
other couples are sad, inactive, though in each other's arms. This situation
might take us back to the 'wasteland' of Eliot where 'exploring hands encounter
no defence.'
The situation in the poem is dense and sad. Love
has been not at all a pleasure.
The last part/stanza of the poem is very
significant and most complicated. It's true that I am also unable to find
something definite in that. However, we must make some ideas about the lines.
So, the poet seems (to me) making a question to himself. Was he trying to taste
the depth of love? Was he not ready to indulge in physical contact? 'That you
then, unabashed, did what I never wished,' this line raises questions of
dispute in the poem. Whom is he addressing to? To himself, or to his
beloved/partner?
One idea arises and that veers the other
idea.
Or it was some truth that the poet finds through
the course of the night and falls aside of the conventional way?
