Remembrance of an End

A Complaint

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

There is a change—and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.

What happy moments did I count!
Blest was I then all bliss above
Now, for that consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I? shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love—it may be deep—
I trust it is,—and never dry:
What matter? if the waters sleep
In silence and obscurity.
—Such change, and at the very door
Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Upon first read of this poem, it is clear that the speaker must learn to live on a type of love they are not comfortable or familiar with. The "change" that is spoken of is the way the speaker receives love and affection from the person they care about. It has changed from a never-ending stream of reminders that what they are part of is real and mutual to a still, silent love that may not include this constant reassurance and stability that the speaker craves. The hardest part of love is when the emotion lingers after the relationship has ended. Love does not require action, but happiness can require demonstrative love. 

The first stanza discusses the puppy love that the speaker shared with the addressee not long ago. This attachment was filled with excitement and passion. The speaker reminisces the times when their connection was constant, "not taking heed/Of its own bounty, or my need".  Their relationship consisted of performative gestures, constantly giving to one another and receiving gratitude in return. There was no shortage of this kind of affection in the speaker's life. The speaker becomes accustomed to this lifestyle. A love that was in "flow" because, like a river, it did not stop coming. 

Like all other pieces of life, it did, however. The second stanza begins to change tense and the tone of the poem becomes melancholy and nostalgic. Halfway through this stanza, the tense changes from past to present. The reader is now exposed to the speaker's present reality. The speaker asks the question "what have I?" to convey that what was there before, isn't. The vivacious love that was described no longer exists the way that it used to. It cannot be described the same way. The author uses this change in tense to signify a change in the speaker's life. With this stanza comes an introduction to the harder part of love. 

It is the part that is not written about. Love still exists even when the relationship does not. The relationship between the speaker and their significant other has experienced change that is powerful enough to redefine the way the speaker discusses love. The flowing river no longer exists in this present, but is now a stagnant well. Their relationship still contains love, though it is not active love. The speaker says the well is "never dry", meaning it is possible for the speaker to recall their relationship and the fondness is still present in the speaker's life, but likely they have no way of reforming a bond that was lost. The core of the relationship is there, but the actions no longer match the amount of love or, in the analogy, water. They no longer act on this emotion, causing the lack of "flow" in this new stage of their relationship. The focus of their love has changed and morphed into "silence and obscurity". The speaker mourns the love they used to share and attempts to heal the deep, metaphorical wounds that were left behind.

In a period of poems about romance, this poem focuses on the loss that coincides with love. Loving deeply results in hurt as the last line points out "Such change, and at the very door/Of my fond heart, hath made me poor". This poem focuses on how difficult it can be to know love and watch it slowly disappear or fade. "The Complaint" that the poem highlights is the hardships that accompany love. Happiness dependent on another person is the fastest way to destroy yourself. 

Outsiders

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/the-boundary

The Boundary by Jhumpa Lahiri

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relating to someone with a much different, more difficult past is hard to relate to, but there are mediums that bridge that gap. These stories, songs and emotion that travels between people is the easiest way to relate and learn from others. Jhumpa Lahiri's Italian story The Boundary is able to overcome this barrier and present to the reader the ideas we associate with home and how difficult they can be to settle with. The ever apparent contrast in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Boundary highlights the struggle that immigrants must endure after moving to an unfamiliar country. 

Lahiri presents to the reader a young narrator, assisting his father and family in caring for a vacation home owned by a faraway man of wealth. The narrator's own family lives in a small cottage behind the grand home. The narrator's family is an immigrant family that works to care for another home and his guests. They are presented as outsiders. The narrator remarks that "The owner lives abroad, but he’s not a foreigner like us. In the second paragraph, the narrator has already remarked a stark difference between themselves and the others in the story. They are the people that do not belong and they accept this fact. They have hidden to this secluded home in the desert to get away from the prejudices that come with this thought. 

The visiting family has invaded this space as many other have and claimed it as her own story to write. The mother of the guest family doesn't go out and celebrate the festivities with her family, but instead stays home and writes about the narrator and their family. The story ends with the narrator finding "shopping lists in the faint, small script that the mother used, on other sheets of paper, to write all about us" referencing the days she spent bathing in the sun scribbling away on her notepad. The narrator and their family have now become characters in a story that they were not allowed to tell themselves. Similar to how immigrants lives are written off in government and media, a woman with the money to afford vacations and a big family takes the right to write about a subject that isn't allowed to put in their own thoughts or feelings. She likely discusses the tranquility of the home or how happy those working are, but in reality, the narrator's family has suffered hardship and has come to this home planted in the middle of an empty desert to escape others' assumptions about them. This woman revokes the narrators right to tell their own story. They lose their voice in the telling of their own life.
The way that the family speaks about the landscape and the ambiance of the home is similar, but opposite, of how the narrator sees it. They each speak of the quiet, the lack of people, the empty desert. The visiting family uses words like "peaceful" and "relaxing", while the narrator wonders "what they know about the loneliness here. What do they know about the days, always the same, in our dilapidated cottage?...Would they like the harsh quiet that reigns here all winter?" It is the contrast of being an outsider. In this situation, however, the outsider is the person that calls this place home. The narrator is still treated as someone who does not belong here and is unwelcome. They are left with only the quiet and the desert when everything settles, compared to the pretty, expensive life that this family possesses.
These two families are the only people for miles and the focus of this story. Still, they are given significantly different circumstances that change their view of their surroundings. A relaxing getaway can be a prison depending on past experiences. When surrounded by hate and fear and being forced away from home, an empty desert can seem isolating and lonely. A child growing up with their only interaction coming from school and week-long visitors, it can be extremely hard to love home. This is a life that some are forced to live to escape hate and overcome bias.

A Snapshot

Harlem Shadows
By Claude McKay

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire's call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.

Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Claude McKay is able to take a picture of 1920's Harlem and present it to his reader's in his poem Harlem Shadows. He writes about what he watches in the dark nights of Harlem. McKay is able to show us in a three stanza poem the injustices that black people faced in his lifetime. They were forced to act in a way that was distasteful just to keep from drowning in the darkness of what is happening around them. They must play to "desire's call" or bend their bodies to appeal to men's lust to sustain themselves. McKay allows the speaker to sit and repeat what is happening before him to express his hurt that the children in Harlem are fighting to survive in ways that are not in line with the pride and faith in his people.
McKay emphasizes the fact that these girls he is seeing and writing about are children. He uses words like "timid" and "girls" to ensure the reader knows that the people he is speaking about are not old enough to be forced to care for themselves. They belong inside being taught and cared for by a parent or someone responsible enough to make decisions that will not be harmful. They wander instead, making decisions that may not be healthy and hurting themselves in the process. The girls in this poem are not able to take care of themselves, but must do so in the only way they know they have control of.
The act that these girls are committing is not mentioned in the poem. It is implied, but even to McKay what is happening on these streets before him is something disgraceful and unmentionable. He says these girls must "bend and barter at desire's call", implying that they are attempting to catch the male gaze. They are earning a living by doing this service. The streets are a place where it is unavoidable to watch a girl attempt to take control of herself by selling it to someone else. The speaker is expressing sympathy towards those who must live a life they are not happily living. They are simply moving "street to street", stuck in an endless loop of this destructive behavior. There is no way to escape this lifestyle because there is no other choice available to them.
The choice to earn a living in a way that is respectable is taken from these girls when they are young by a world ravaged by cruelty and without justice. McKay understands these women because he knows that in a world "Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace", there is no possibility to thrive. Life is about staying alive however possible for these young girls in Harlem. The world has cast them away, deemed them unworthy of a happy lify and forced them to use the only thing they have control of to sustain themselves. McKay remarks that society is depriving young black women, along with other minorities of wealth, honor and respect. They have no way to earn these things back for themselves and instead must fight against them.
Claude McKay can clearly point out the symptoms of the predjucidice and injustice that are present inside his own community. This poem was written during a time where black people did not have a voice to demand change. McKay recognized that the voice of those he called his own community was taken from them and he used his poetry to give them some of that power and control for that. In Harlem Shadows he pulls the darkest pieces of his community and pulls them into the light. Even in his own community these women were disgraceful, but McKay recognizes the lack of choice and the need that they represented. He gave them a voice and spoke for them to invoke change and conversation.