a thread in which ilx interprets poems, sometimes line by line, and disagrees a lot (probably)

"white peace" is a historical term. it refers to peace treaties in which both sides kind of go easy on the other, often reverting to whatever the terms were before the armed conflict

That's good knowledge Karl Malone, thanks!

I read this poem three times last night and enjoyed it more each time. It's playing with voice & expectations & all that but there's always, in Craig's poem, something wondrous, magical in the way words describe something happening and get to be as magical about it as they do or don't like.

Winter

A kind of Danish cow
long thought to be extinct
lumbers slowly from a fog-soaked forest.
Past the statue of two men shaking hands on horseback.
Into the trainyard with its newly
brunette-colored coal cars.
It is late, lamps light the trainyard.
One of the trainmen sees the cow and has a thought
like a small grey infant sinking
ever so slowly in the icy harbor.
The cow continues out the other side of the trainyard.
The trainman shudders at the thought.
The trainman’s cat Stamina crunches walnuts in her cat dish.

Now, nearly thirty years later,
ladies and gentlemen it is my great pleasure
to introduce to you that very same cow.
(The cow is led out onto the stage by a young boy dressed as a farmer.)

if the walcott poem was written 15-odd years after the end of WW2 then it it's too early to be "post-colonial"

i: it's abt the kikuyu (mentioned almost straight away)
ii: it was being written between the end of the mau mau uprising (1952-60) and kenyan independence (1963)

so this seems a good place to start

(the internet dates it to 1962)