Analysis of for they had things to say
Charles Bukowski 1920 (Andernach) – 1994 (San Pedro)
the canaries were there, and the lemon tree
and the old woman with warts;
and I was there, a child
and I touched the piano keys
as they talked —
but not too loudly
for they had things to say,
the three of them;
and I watched them cover the canaries at night
with flour sacks:
"so they can sleep, my dear."
I played the piano quietly
one note at a time,
the canaries under their sacks,
and there were pepper trees,
pepper trees brushing the roof like rain
and hanging outside the windows
like green rain,
and they talked, the three of them
sitting in a warm night's semicircle,
and the keys were black and white
and responded to my fingers
like the locked-in-magic
of a waiting, grown-up world;
and now they're gone, the three of them
and I am old:
pirate feet have trod
the clean-thatched floors
of my soul,
and the canaries sing no more.
Scheme | AXXBXAXCDEX AXEBFXFCGDXXXCXXXGX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (43%) Tetractys (30%) |
Metre | 00100100101 0011011 011101 01100101 111 11110 111111 0111 011110001011 1101 111111 110010100 11101 00101011 010101 101100111 01011010 111 0110111 1000111 0010101 00101110 101010 1010111 01110111 0111 10111 0111 111 00010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 821 |
Words | 160 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 19 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 330 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 79 |
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"for they had things to say" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 17 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/53827/for-they-had-things-to-say>.
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