“Two Trees”
The final line of this poem has the speaker insisting that “trees are all this poem is about.” The speaker is not to be trusted as it is quite clear that this poem is intended to be allegorical. It is about two men and two trees. One man grafts an orange tree to a lemon tree to create what kids in the village refer to as a “magic tree” producing two fruits. The second man goes to great trouble to separate the orange from the lemon tree but, curiously, does not destroy them, instead choosing only to replant them separately four feet apart. Exactly what the poem is an allegory for is left up to the reader who is ironically encouraged by the final assertion to perhaps spend a bit more time trying to work the symbolism out.
The Pool Table
“The Ferryman’s Arms” is a more distinctly clear symbolic poem. It is a first-person narrative in which the speaker describes being drawn to darkened room in the back of a pub where sits a pool table where a coin placed in a slot unleashes the balls for play. The imagery throughout situates the darkened room and the pool table as a symbolic stand-in for Death.
We
“The Rat” tells a story about a poet who wrote the best poem ever written about a rat. This excites a narrator who uses the universal “we” to describe some vague and nebulous group of fans of the poet who set sail to the island he calls home, hoping to read more masterful verse only to be disappointed. In their disappointment, they offer a multitude of advice on how he could improve his poetry only to wind up demanding in unison that he write more poems exactly like “The Rat.” Guess who that “we” is supposed to symbolize and then take a look in the mirror.
The Zero/Zero Tie
The title of the poem “Nil Nil” is a reference to what drives Americans to distraction wondering how so much of the world can possibly find soccer so enthralling when almost every game can potentially end in a tie. The title is the central symbolic element of the poem which is all about how every competition each individual faces during his existence ultimately ends in a zero/zero tie philosophically speaking. Eventually you are going to perish and the thing you fight so hard against is going to disappear into meaninglessness. Life, the title of the poem as well as the content suggests, is to be enjoyed for the sport of it, not the outcome.
“Unicorn”
The speaker describes the titular creature of this poem as “an animal that never was” that nevertheless came to be. The message of the poem—deliver allusively rather than explicitly—is that no evidence has ever been found to indicate that a unicorn ever existed and yet it is a creature that enjoys a life at least as active as the extinct dodo. The unicorn is therefore a symbol of the power of imagination and creativity to give the spirit of life to things which never actually were.
