There is a tree, by day,
That, at night, Has a shadow,
A hand huge and black,
With fingers long and black.
All through the dark,
Against the white man's house,
In the little wind,
The black hand plucks and plucks
At the bricks.
The bricks are the color of blood
and very small.
Is it a black hand,
Or is it a shadow?
Notes
This poems depicts an eerie haunting that seeps into the psyche of the poet.
Tenebris means "dark and gloomy".
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From guest Nick Anderson (contact)
The metaphors in this poem are powerful and unmistakeable. The tree here seems to be a sort of specter, a haunting figure in the era of lynching. The "white man's house" could come to represent the American empire. The black hand plucking at the bricks might be searching for kin, for history, and for memory. -
Doing a word search on the title is interesting, and then discovering that there are poems with the same or slight variations with the same title (Wilde, Hardy to name just two) is something. I like this poem because you get the feel of the racial tensions, and yet, there are levels of more, as with the question at the end of the poem. "House" could be literal, or it could be symbolic of the body. The tree has layers--could be a guilty conscience haunting someone in the white house; could be slavery and the spirits of slaves attacking the safety of the sleeping occupants.
"House"=plantation...yes, could be. Lines 10-11 are interesting with a close reading. "Very small"--an indication that the slave's blood is a very small thing in the society that promotes slavery. Could also be read that small actions are mocked until the actions are embraced by a collective whole.
Smart poem. Well-crafted. -
It is a weird poem,not one that you usually come across but it is full of meaning. From Red Ruby
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