poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

Dear editor forgive me for asking rather than commenting (for I are [sic] familiar with the laws of this website) but can or will anyone offer me any insight INTO this piece? It speaks of many things and I'm intrigued.

The sound just carries you away to the real meaning, which is that special poetic wistfulness of loss, and in this case, a particularly wasteful loss that seems to include everything that humans do, except the "common sleep." Note how the stones (Wheelwright's analogy for what happens to us after death) seem more human than the humans. The repeated refrain about foes refers, I believe, to Wheelwright's frustration, as a Trotskyite, that the masses are so easily addicted to war, thus making them enemies of their own self interest, and making lessons of this hard life impossible. The poet wants to be speaking to someone, but there is no one left, not even himself, who has long since stopped believing in anything that offered honest transcendence.