02-24-2015, 02:18 AM
To be honest -and this is just me-I would prefer the poem to start at line 7: "The spirits who dwell there.."
The first few lines are giving me directions to a hill with crosses, outside the Central State Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane. I'm immediately filled with my own response to the shocking words: "lunatic", "asylum" and "coloured insane", which makes it difficult for me to hear the spirits who "speak silently to the passing world". However, there is a poignancy to this image of spirits "meandering ..like old lost rivers", which the "occasional visitor" carries with him, as he travels to the gentle bend in the road. "Ripening dreams", at the end of the poem, works well.
The first few lines are giving me directions to a hill with crosses, outside the Central State Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane. I'm immediately filled with my own response to the shocking words: "lunatic", "asylum" and "coloured insane", which makes it difficult for me to hear the spirits who "speak silently to the passing world". However, there is a poignancy to this image of spirits "meandering ..like old lost rivers", which the "occasional visitor" carries with him, as he travels to the gentle bend in the road. "Ripening dreams", at the end of the poem, works well.