The Summer Of Lost Rachel Flashcards
Potato crops are flowering
Leading on to it becoming a fruit (pruition) - first stage - Rachel never made the next stage
Who is Rachel?
H’s niece, aged 9, who was hit by a car in the summer - this poem is written a year on from this incident
An every berries briar
Is glittering and dripping
Briar - wild roses
It’s wet but sunny as if the world is crying for Rachel’s death but the rain is washing away the misery
Whenever showers plout down
On flooded hay and flooding drills.
There’s a ring around the moon.
‘Plout’ - bucketing it down
‘There’s a ring around the moon’ - more damp weather I expected
The whole summer was waterlogged
Yet everyone is loath
To trust the rain’s soft-soaping ways
And sentiments of growth
‘Soft-soaping ways’ - get round someone
‘Growth’ - the rain is helping - the world still turns - life still goes on
Because all confidence in summer’s
Unstinting largesse
They don’t feel summer’s generosity anymore
‘Largesse’ - generosity
Broke down last May when we laid you out
In white, your whited face
They don’t feel like life can go on
‘White’ - symbolises innocence
‘Whited’ - she doesn’t look like she did - she was fearful when the accident happened
Gashed from the accident, but still,
So absolutely still,
‘Gashed’ - brutal word - hard G
Repetition of ‘still’ - shock - could suggest that every time he thinks of her he only sees her body
And the setting sun set merciless
And every merciful
They don’t think life can go on
The setting sun doesn’t make everything better
Register inside us yearned
‘Register’ - mode of being - way of responding
‘Yearned’ - longed
To run the film back
To turn back time
H imagines the situation as a film - when he thinks about it he keeps seeing it over and over again - this is also a thing that people think only really happens in films
For you to step into the road
Wheeling your bright-rimmed bike
Imagery - he’s seeing everything clearly
Safe and sound as usual,
Across, then down the lane,
The twisted spokes all straightened out,
The awful skid-marks gone.
She did it all the time and she was always alright - the situation is unbelievable
But no. So let the downpours flood
Our memory’s riverbed
‘But no’ - short sentence - you can’t turn back time
‘So’ - sigh
‘Riverbed’ - creates a deep trench in your mind - a scar - she can’t be forgotten
Until, in thick-webbed currents,
The life you might have led
‘Thicked-webbed currents’ - a river is needed to wash away the memories of last summer - create a different course
‘You’ - the poem is for Rachel
