war in Belfast, and political readings of the poem, whereby the sealed
hotel could be a prison or a place of safety, are merely insinuated. A
clue to the way in which the political situation is covered in Captain
Lavender is alluded to in the epigraph for the collection. This is taken
from Pablo Picasso and compares with the statements made by Paul
Klee that are cited in Chapter Two: ëI have not painted the war [Ö]
but I have no doubt that the war is in [Ö] these paintings I have
done.í ñ Picasso, 1944.
ëThe Over Motherí provides us with a poem that is hermetic or
locked away, where the reader engages in a game of hide-and-seek
with the meaning of the poem. The images of the poem lend them-
selves to multiple interpretations and so challenge the containment of
the poem within any single hermeneutic space of meaning. In the
ësealedí space of the poem in which the war may be contained and
which could alternatively be the backdrop for either casual sex or
torture in a hotel room, nothing can escape: ëpassion/ exhausts itself at
the mouthí and ëtendernessí ëdies inside meí. Like the room, the body
is secretively sealed within itself and thresholds become built into the
poem. The mouth is a threshold between body and world but this
place of articulation and communication between subject and world is
ëexhaustedí; it seems to fail to connect the inside of the body with the
outer environment and its ëaudienceí. The inability of the mouth to
communicate even by ëkissesí is suggested as any emotion this ëstirsí,
ëdiesí ëinside meí. At the same time, this could be read as a reference
to reaching orgasm. If the poem refers to lovers, then they are
ëunderlovedí and there is little ëtendernessí as they remain self-
contained. If the poem refers to prisoners, the ëmen are handledí ëas if
they were furnitureí, whereby they would be dragged or lifted as
would dead bodies. It is uncertain whether the ëunderloved bodyí
belongs to the men, the poetic speaker or whether the speaker is a
voyeur who watches people inside the hotel. In spite of the reference
to a body, the poetic voice manages to remain disembodied, and it is
difficult to ascertain from where the poetic voice is coming. The poem
occludes identities and so figures in the poem remain uncharacterized.
The poem shifts from the scene of stanza one and the voice
directly addresses its ëaudienceí. It is implied that this audience is as
ëdeadí as the unresponsive and ëunderlovedí body. The audience are
described oddly as being ëverticalí and as they stand upright, they
grace
(Grace)
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