can someone please help me interpret this poem by carlos a. angeles?

Question

LANDSCAPE II
by:Carlos A. Angeles

Sun in the knifed horizon bleeds the sky,
Spilling a peacock stain upon the sands,
Across some murdered rocks refused to die.
It is your absence touches my sad hands
Blinded like flags in the wreck of air.

And catacombs of cloud enshroud the cool
And calm involvement of the darkened plains,
The stunted mourners here: and here, a full
And universal tenderness which drains
The sucked and golden breath of sky comes bare.

Now, while the dark basins the void of space,
Some sudden crickets, ambushing me near,
Discover vowels of your whispered face
And subtly cry. I touch your absence here
Remembering the speechless of your hair.

Answer 1

This man is so deep in grief that even the beauty of a sunset makes his heart (and therefore the sky) bleed, nature in daylight is of no comfort, the clouds mourn, too, he cannot breath, etc. It is only in darkness that he finds comfort (hears the voice, sees the face of his loved one in the sound of the crickets), is able to remember and, feel her presence and cry (too shameful perhaps to cry in daylight and therefore suffocated by the "golden breath of sky".
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

First stanza: a "knifed" horizon is a horizon that you can see devoid of mountains or hills...as if someone cut it from the sky with a knife. He says it "bleeds the sky", meaning that the sun is either coming up or, more likely, going down as a sunset full of darker reds. The peacock stains are the florescent pinks and oranges you get in the desert at sun-up and sunset. The "murdered rocks" are the rocks that have burst from the water that turned to ice in the cold desert night, making them look as if they were hit with an impossibly large hammer that shattered them...they they still stand, and thus "refuse to die". "your absence touches my sad hands" refers to the empty "feeling" when you are used to holding someone who's no longer there, and he compares them to flags in the wreck of air, which conjours up images of tattered flags in the desert that got that way from the sand being blown by the desert wind...that "wreck of air".

Stanza 2: He speaks of "catacombs of cloud" that "enshroud the cool and calm involement of the darkened plains". If you've ever seen the big thunderheads move through the desert you're used to seeing these "pillars" frame the sky and turn the day almost into night by their shadow, and the plateaus that would normally seem large appear as "stunted" in comparison to the enormity of these clouds in a horizon that literally stretches across your field of view and beyond, almost as if bowed in mourning. And in this view, there appears a universal tenderness that drains the color of gold you'd see on a sunny day to pale, almost colorless images in sepia tone, as if stripped bare of all its color.

Stanza 3: He says, "while the dark", using "dark" as a personification, "basins the void of space", meaning that the darkness appears to create a bowl in the landscape where there is actually only flat land. Some "sudden" crickets, meaning crickets that started making noise all at once, "ambushing" near him, meaning that he hadn't noticed their presence, as if they had been lying in wait for him as in an ambush, discover "vowels of your whispered face and subtly cry." You can't whisper "consonants" without closing your lips, which is something the desert wind obviously cannot do (try it), so he means that the sound of the crickets carried on the wind evoke a picture of her face in tones as soft as a whisper, and he cries...but subtly so, so that no one else could see him do so. He goes to this place to "touch her absence" because it reminds him of her, and how the beauty of her hair would leave him speechless.

Some of the phrases are deliberately stilted, as if intentionally so to sound more "native american". However, I suspect that not all are deliberate and there are at least a few that could have used some editing. There is, however, a raw feel to the poem that might have been lost with too much editing, so it's a trade-off at times.

It is a bit "transcendental" for most readers, but otherwise a dark, brooding, yet pretty read.

Answer 3

Yeah I'd have to know more about who he was I guess. I'm not getting anything. Vowels of your face? vowels are rounded sounds .. I dunno I got nothing.

ok ok I think I got it.

I think its an environmentalist talking about global warming (not kidding)

Knifed horizon could be a refrence to us attacking the ozone

Murdered rocks could be a continuance of that the earth isn't dead yet but we're killing it.

Blinded like flags in the wreck of air

could be how nations have ignored signs we were killing the planet. flags blow in air we're poluting.

Yeah, I think thats it.

Answer 4

I think he's saying, "I really miss that girl with the cute butt."

Answer 5

high-toned gobbledygook is still gobbledygook