The poem is about the difference between 'my mind' and 'your mind' The first stanza makes you think of a captain on a stormy night, uncontrollable and confused. The second stanza has a more stable and cozy settling. Their is an estranged connection between the lovers due to their differences, but you know what they say; opposites attract.
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Difference
My mind’s a map. A mad sea-captain drew it Under a flowing moon until he knew it; Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs, And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs. “Here there be tygers.” “Here we buried Jim.” Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim About their buried idol, drowned so cold He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold. A country like the dark side of the moon, A cider-apple country, harsh and boon, A country savage as a chestnut-rind, A land of hungry sorcerers. Your mind? —Your mind is water through an April night, A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its white, A lavender as fragrant as your words, A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds, Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth, Flutters and beats about those lovely things. You are the soul, enchanted with its wings, The single voice that raises up the dead To shake the pride of angels. I have said. -Stephan Vincent Benet |
American Names I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat. Seine and Piave are silver spoons, But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn, There are English counties like hunting-tunes Played on the keys of a postboy's horn, But I will remember where I was born. I will remember Carquinez Straits, Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane, The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane. I will remember Skunktown Plain. I will fall in love with a Salem tree And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz, I will get me a bottle of Boston sea And a blue-gum nigger to sing me blues. I am tired of loving a foreign muse. Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard, Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast, It is a magic ghost you guard But I am sick for a newer ghost, Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post. Henry and John were never so And Henry and John were always right? Granted, but when it was time to go And the tea and the laurels had stood all night, Did they never watch for Nantucket Light? I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse. I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea. You may bury my body in Sussex grass, You may bury my tongue at Champmedy. I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. -Stephen Vincent Benet |
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