"The Pardon by Richard Wilbur, A critical Reading"

The Pardon

My dog lay dead five days without a grave

In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine

And a jungle of grass and honeysuckle vine.

I who had loved him while he kept alive

Went only close enough to where he was

To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell

Twined with another odour heavier still

And hear the flies' intolerable buzz.

Well, I was ten and very much afraid.

In my kind world the dead were out of range

And I could not forget the sad or strange

In beast or man. My father took the spade

And buried him. Last night I saw the grass

Slowly devide (it was the same scene

But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)

And saw the dog emerging. I confess

I felt afraid again, but still he came

In the carnal sun, clothed in a hymn of flies

And death was breeding in his lively eyes.

I started in to cry and call his name,

Asking forgiveness of his tongueless head.

.....I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:

But whether this was false of honest dreaming

I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.

This poem, simple on the surface, is a fine example of what most poets try to achieve. There are several themes explored simultaneously within the poem and complex issues are being handled in a manner that is both simple and artful in its use of a narrative from childhood to explore adult themes.

Firstly, this poem tackles the theme of death and the poet's coming to terms with death as a reality. Secondly, it deals with the ability of the unconscious mind to influence the waking self through the medium of dreams and examines their role in ordering experience to help the conscious self come to terms with trauma. Thirdly, it examines the change from the innocence of childhood to the sophistication of a...

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... how the mind works. Sometimes deep seated guilts will manifest themselves sub-consciously. Shakespeare uses the idea in `Macbeth' with Lady Macbeth's growing madness and the visitation of Banquo's ghost. This has something of the same flavour; `gory locks' are being shaken here. The sound quality of the double `-ing' endings in lines twenty two and twenty three lull the reader before the final hammer blow of `dead'. The word takes on a thudding sound like a heart stopping. It is only here that the poet gives away the fact that the poem is not really about the dog at all, but `the dead' suggesting a group, possibly of friends or comrades from World War II that he has so far avoided mourning. The poet reaches a moment of epiphany, he realises that the past can be brought back, relived, suffered again, and finally mourned; that redemption can be reached.

(813 words)