DEMETER MOURNING

Demeter Mourning
Nothing can console me. You may bring silk
to make skin sigh, dispense yellow roses
in the manner of ripened dignitaries.
You can tell me repeatedly
I am unbearable (and I know this):
still, nothing turns the gold to corn,
nothing is sweet to the tooth crushing in.

Ill not ask for the impossible;

one learns to walk by walking.
In time Ill forget his empty brimming,
I may laugh again at
a bird, perhaps, chucking the nest
but it will not be happiness,
for I have known that.

This poem begins with a statement reminiscent of Demeters attitude in Grief: The Council and
Protection where she cannot be consoled. She is still drowning in her grief which she says
cannot be replaced by material things. She uses the aural and tactile image of the sound of silk
against the skin, and compares it to a sigh. In this metaphor, the sensuous image is cleverly
chosen to show how she foregoes the pleasure that can be derived when one feels such a
treasured, luxurious material against the skin in order to dwell in her misery. This image
accentuates the depth of her despair which is additionally highlighted with her refusal to accept
the yellow roses which symbolizes sunshine, positivity and happiness and can convey meanings
like warmth, gladness and affection. These contrast with the desolation that Demeter projects. It
is the flower of choice to show friendship in ceremonial occasions. She uses the word ripened
to make a parallel with the yellow colour she already highlighted as well as to suggest that the
individuals receiving the roses are old and traditional.
She recognizes that she chooses to be the way she is by echoing the sentiments of those around
her that she is unbearable. Dove use the aside to show that Demeter is a willing participant in
the grief as she acknowledges in brackets (and I know this). Her tone is extremely pessimistic
in this poem and this is made even worse by the fact that she acknowledges her role as a willing
participant. The pessimistic tone is echoed in the statements cleverly introduced after the semi
colon with the word still and the repetition of the word nothing. The first nothing is used to
show that Demeter has forfeited her purpose as the Goddess of Agriculture where the sunshine
(gold) cannot be used to bring the bountiful harvests symbolic in the corn. The second nothing
relates to according to Pat Righelato, her living a kind of afterlife of the senses. There is no
flavour, no enjoyment and substance to her existence. This tactile image radiates the sense of
nothingness which Demeter feels as a result of her loss.
In the first stanza the persona is speaking to someone in the universal You. She directs her
musings inwards by changing from the second person pronoun to the first person, I in the
second stanza, heralded by the next seven lines. Dove is again manipulating the sonnet form in
this seven/seven pattern. She does not have the traditional Petrarchan sonnet structure of the
octave and the sestet but in some ways her eighth line acts like the volta. In the Petrarchan sonnet
the volta would be the ninth line and signals a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought
and/or emotion, reflecting a turn in the mood or tone of the poem. Here we see that it signals a
resolution as she becomes very introspective and concentrates of the I. She has made a
declarative statement that she is not going to waste her time with what can never be and it is only
through practice that you can truly learn one learns to walk by walking. It is through practice
and time that she will forget this life that is filled to capacity with emptiness, symbolized by
empty brimming. She finds a way to cope and exist but not truly live since in her mind she will
never recover from the loss. In existing she projects the outward trappings associated with life
like laughter I may laugh again chucking the nest but this is superficial since she cannot
regain what she has lost. It will not be happiness since she knew true happiness when she had
her daughter and now this is gone.