Missing Dates Poem by William Empson

Missing Dates

Rating: 5.0


Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is not your system or clear sight that mills
Down small to the consequence a life requires;
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills
Of young dog blood gave but a month's desires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills
Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.
The complete fire is death. From partial fires
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is the poems you have lost, the ills
From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Mike Farman 23 August 2007

Fascinated by this villanelle, but unable to penetrate its true meaning (if it has one) Most poems begin from the specific and may progress to a generalisation....this starts out with a generalisation and stays with it, unless I'm missing something. Would be glad to hear somebody tell me that I'm wrong and give their interpretation of this poem.

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