Analysis of Right of Return
Right Of Return
I would like the right of return to a village
in the Ukraine conceived by David Lean
sun flowers barley fields mill with great stone slowly turning—
I would like the right of return to a port
on the Black Sea, smell of brine,
turpentine, good ships filled with something from or to Cathay—
I would like to return to a metropolitan city
with ornamental ironwork on the bridges and smug
cafés that serve absinthe—
I would like the right of return to everything I love,
I loved, I thought I loved, I might have loved
except for the climate, the people, I couldn’t get a job,
I lost my job, my boyfriend left, I left him,
we both left for a place we thought we’d love
or had loved, or knew we’d never love but what the hell difference did it make?
the point is—we can’t—
Can’t go back to the true love, old love,
old face and grace of the lilting selves
we thought we were, or were, or hoped to be—
Can’t go back to the books and poems never written,
badly written, half-written and discarded—
Can’t hear your mother’s laugh or smell your father’s pipe,
can’t sleep cuddled and safe between your grandparents—
But we persist and we endure,
encounter one another and hold fast, as our life’s wheel
turns around the bend of circumstance or despair—
as fortune’s wheel spins slow the disk sublime,
Hear one another’s voices in the dark mark our short-lived time.
Scheme | X XXX XXX AXX BXX XBXX BXA XXXX XXX CC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101 111011011010 0001011101 11010111111010 11101101101 1011111 1011111011101 11110110010010 10101101001 111110 1110110111011 1111111111 01101001011101 1111111111 1111011111 1111111011101100111 01111 111101111 11011011 1110101111 1111010101010 10101100010 111101111101 11100101110 11010101 010101001111011 10101110101 1101110101 11110001110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,445 |
Words | 280 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 107 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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"Right of Return" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/128370/right-of-return>.
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