The Halo That Would Not Light

Mrs. White, I am fully aware that this post is late. However, on my defense, today felt like Sunday. I naturally thought to do my blog the day before we go back to school, and once again, my logic failed me. So please, go easy on me. :)

The Halo That Would Not Light

Lucie Brock-Broido

When, after many years, the raptor beak

Let loose of you,

He dropped your tiny body 

In the scarab-colored hollow

Of a carriage, left you like a finch

Wrapped in its nest of linens wound

With linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box.

Tonight the wind is hover-

Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back 

And forth with no one in them

As certain and invisible as 

Red scarves silking endlessly

From a magician’s hollow hat

And the spectacular catastrophe

Of your endless childhood

Is done.

What strikes me about this poem is the haunting detail that the poet describes the metaphors with. The lines “hunting as the leather seats of swings go back and forth with no one in them,” reminds me of a scary movie - the creaking swings with wind throwing them back and forth with a dark, abandoned park as the background. Is the first line talking about a stork, maybe?

The format of the poem is difficult to understand, so I had to break it up differently and read it as sentences, not stanzas. It’s hard for me to decipher the actual story of the poem. I don’t know if it is that a baby was abandoned in a carriage and will not have a childhood, or if it is a child growing up and no longer being a child. I think it is the latter, because the former is to depressing to think about. However, the details make me believe it is the former. I really need to discuss this poem with someone to maybe come up with an answer, even though there is not just one answer. 

I’m not sure what the point is of all the description if the child is simply growing up. Why would the poet describe such haunting images of a childhood. Maybe the child in the poem came from a dark past and had many catastrophes in his or her life, and there is now relief that he or she is finally done with childhood. I think the title also contributes to this theory because children are supposed to be little angels, but the child had so much darkness, that the child's halo would not light.