For Sharon Horvath

 From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
 A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
 And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
 From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all
 There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
 To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
 A time between times, a flowerless funeral.
 No more than that
 Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
 Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
 That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
 "It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."

I stumbled upon this poem thanks to Radhika mentioning the website “Poetry in motion”. The interpretation of this poem would be a daunting task to even the seasoned critics, and I have but tried to “comprehend” the poetry.

To me the poem ties time and the power of transience in our lives. Some things though seemingly transient are destined to unfold ever so slowly, giving us the luxury to soak in the beauty of “it” being prolonged and when its over, it reinforces the fact that it may start all over again, only to capture another’s attention. Of course this poem also tries to paint the image of man as a mortal being and that many things that we believe to be significant may melt to nothingness.

Well if it hurts no one, I would stick with my first line of interpretation. Perhaps Mark Strand’s opinion on interpreting poetry would be a good way to summarize this poem.

“It’s not that poetry reveals more about the world — it doesn’t — but it reveals more about our interactions with the world than our other modes of expression. And it doesn’t reveal more about ourselves alone in isolation, but rather it reveals that mix of self and other, self and surrounding, where the world ends and we begin, where we end and the world begins”.

-— Mark Strand (Interview with Katharine Coles)

— Nandini