I thought this poem by Weldon Kees was interesting, perhaps because of how different his treatment of the subject matter is from a Robinson Jeffers poem (see Jeffers’ November Surf) that I just finished commenting on.
LANDS END
A day all blue and white, and we
Came out of woods to sand
And snow-capped waves. The sea
Rose with us as we walked, the land
Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.
Here where I built my life ten years ago,
The day breaks gray and cold;
And brown surf, muddying the shore,
Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.
Children and men break bottles on the stones.
Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,
Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.
I like both poems, but despite the fact that he was considerably younger than Jeffers, Kees’ poem seems dated to me, reminding me a lot of Eliot’s â€?”Wasteland.†There’s certainly no sense of environmentalism in Kees’ poem. Rather, he sees the desolation merely as a reflection of his own inner state.
As noted in my comments on â€?”November Surf,†I’d be much more likely to react with outrage to the pollution desecrating the beach than with a sense of inner despair, but, then, I’m much more likely to be outraged than I am to be overcome with a sense of despair — which, of course, is not to say that I haven’t occasionally seen the PNW’s dark skies as a reflection of my own mood.