Volume 10 49
sentiment flies in the face of Socrates by claiming
that there is no difference in the unexamined life
and the examined one. He lists some of the meth-
ods of philosophically examining a life’s “Unan-
swerable questions, small talk,/ Unprovable theo-
rems, long-abandoned arguments” and presenting
them in a cynical, mocking tone. He then offers his
own idea of how to study and attempt to under-
stand life: “You’ve got to write it all down.”
Whether examining such tangibles or visuals as
“Landscape or waterscape,” the sunlight on ever-
green trees, or the evening itself, it is best to ex-
press ourselves on paper. Just as students are told
to take good notes and to write down questions and
comments on a subject, the poet contends that writ-
ten language is the key to self-examination. This is
a point he will return to at the end of the poem.
Lines 45-48:
Wright ends the fourth stanza with strings of
images that exemplify the poet’s notion of exami-
nation through written expression. He lists natural,
physical objects—the moon, spiders, hedges, birds,
toads, and tree frogs—in an effort to describe as
much of his surrounding as possible, thereby mak-
ing it more comprehensible. He complements the
attempt to understand, or examine, these aspects of
living by embellishing the nouns with descriptive
words. Depicting the moon as “half-full” or “half-
empty” is an allusion to the philosophical adage re-
garding optimism and pessimism: if you’re an op-
timist, your glass is half full; if you’re a pessimist,
your glass is half empty. Wright calls the night
“starless and egoless,” meaning that without its
bright, shiny adornments, it has nothing to gloat
about. He further emphasizes the darkness by de-
scribing it as “blood-black and prayer-black.” Re-
ligious imagery is never far away in a Wright poem.
Lines 49-53:
The fifth stanza centers once again on death
and employs celestial imagery, noting that when
we die, we are like “star charts demagnetized.” The
first two lines imply a shortcoming or incomplete-
ness in life. We take “secondary affections” and
“second-hand satisfaction” to our graves, ending
our lives only “half-souled.” The speaker assures
us, however, that though our bodies may be “cold
and untouchable” we’re well dressed and do not
harbor any bad feelings or resentment over dying.
Wright even jests about death in a playful tone, say-
ing “we’re out of here, and sweet meat.”
Lines 54-60:
The last half of the fifth stanza continues the
discussion of death, but also incorporates the
metaphor of language down to its individual letters
and words. Once we die, we become “calligraphers
of the disembodied,” protecting the sacredness of
language as though we are “God’s word-wards.”
Like constellations, our souls light up the night sky
in the shape of letters. To emphasize the vast empti-
ness and expansion of the universe, Wright calls
the atmosphere “The nothing that’s nowhere” and
implies that it simply waits there for us to “illumi-
nate” against it. Eventually, our “letters undarken
and come forth.” The term “undarken”—while not
found in a dictionary—is more appropriate than the
term “lighten” would be, for it indicates a general
progression from something that has been there all
along, though too dark to see. In other words, we
all have letters in the sky waiting for our deaths to
illuminate.Lines 61-66:
The first six lines of the final stanza return to
religious imagery intertwined with the idea of
memory and natural surroundings. Recall that in
the first stanza the speaker questioned how mem-
ory could be “so dark and so clear at the same
time,” and here in the last verse, he begins with
“Eluders of memory”—implying yet again the
mysteries of recollection. The mention of the green-
house simply interjects a concrete noun within the
layers of wordplay and theological discourse, the
“Spirit of slides and silences.” Since the phrase “In-
visible Hand” is capitalized, we may assume it
refers to God whom the speaker is asking to “Wit-
ness and walk on.” The “lords” in line 64 may re-
fer back to the “masters” in the first stanza, and the
speaker is asking that his own shifting and discon-
tinuity be succored (relieved) and that he be saved
by the lords of such.Lines 67-73:
The blending of the tangible and the intangi-
ble continues through to the end of “Black Zodiac.”
Not only is it raining “in the gardens and dwarf or-
chard,” but also “in the mind,” implying sadness or
a gloomy outlook. Lines 68-70 reemphasize the
need to find the right language for adequate ex-
pression and that the speaker has spent all after-
noon trying to describe his environment by think-
ing of it as a dictionary—the “lexicon of late
summer” which is also “Under the rain.” Finally,
the speaker acknowledges that “Autumn’s upon us”
and that the “rain fills our narrow beds,” meaningBlack Zodiac