A Piece Of The Storm -- Mark Strand

Guest poem sent in by Nandini Krishnamoorthy

(Poem #1478) A Piece Of The Storm 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." -- Mark Strand

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