OFFERINGS
In this poem, the narrator is the voice representing a group of people, addressing some unknown person who gives out various gifts to everyone. In this sense, the poem could be read as a religious poem, the unknown person symbolizing God or some other type of deity and the narrator being a representative of humanity as a whole.
The gifts are extremely fragile and the offerings often disappear into smoke and then into the night. The sudden disappearance of the gifts pushes the people to stand out for themselves and fight for their rights. The ‘’barricades’’ or the limits many impose upon themselves disappear one by one and as a result the narrator and the rest of the people feel free. Thus, instead of breaking them, the disappearance of the offerings had the result of lifting people up and making them more confident in themselves.
IF YOUR MIRROR BREAKS
The poem mentioned above lists a number of instanced during which a mirror could break while also listing what the person who experiences this must do. The first time when the mirror breaks, the person stands in the front seat of a car and the person is told to stop everything and leap out of the car. This could be a metaphorical situation, representing the point in one’s life when things appear to be going in the right direction. The car may represent that the person is speeding towards progress and the mirror could be some tragic event which happens all of a sudden.
The second instance deals with a person who has a mirror break inside itself. The glass slowly enters the veins of the person and it affects the throat of the person, or rather his or her speech. This could mean that the person suffered some traumatic event and as a result they became hateful and cruel towards those around them.
In the last situation presented in the poem, the mirror breaks while the person is on the highway. Just like in the case of the first person who was on the road, the person is told to stop on the side of the road, and wait for seven years for things to settle down. the important distinction between the first situation and the last is the place where everything takes place, meaning that the highway could symbolize that the person was successful and thus it would be harder for that person to get back on their feet if something tragic were to happen to them.
WHERE THERE'S A WALL
Just like in the poem ‘’IF YOUR MIRROR BREAKS’’, the poem mentioned above deals with the possibility of problems arising in a person’s life, in this poem, those problems being compared with a wall. The narrator presents different ways a person could get past the wall, mentioning here gates, doors, ladders, people who protect the wall and sleep, torture and even the possibility of flying over the wall or even digging a tunnel under it. The extensive list has the purpose of transmitting the idea that even though the wall appears to be too big to cross, there is always a way if a person really desires to do this.
Every person who wants to cross the wall has a complete different experience and this experience could be written to help those coming after him if they find themselves in the same situation. The narrator finds himself in front of the wall as well and the description he offers of it, an extremely high construction, its top in the clouds, shows just how difficult it could be to overcome the wall. However, voices from the other side of the wall prove that there are people who managed to cross over the wall, despite being difficult.
