ENTRY 16: Identify An Emotional Change in the Poem

Emotional change: The memories of the childhood show the emotional change from the three to six lines in the first stanza. At first, the narrator is simply gazing at the snowscape, but when the memories of the childhood flow into his head, the feeling of loneliness and isolation comes out.

How change: The poet creates this change by using the contrast between the memories of the childhood with the reality he was experiencing now. As we can see in three to six line of the first stanza, he described scenes in his memory, like palms, cereus, and white keys, all of which are dynamic and full of vigor and are the representations of life. In reality, what he has inside is loneliness, a kind of isolation from the outside so he waits to hear a step by others, which he shows in the 4 and 5 lines in the second stanza. And the life representations now are replaced with the white, stiff, cold snow, lacking the vigor but with silence. 

selected poem

Absences

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano- outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,
Like the memory of a white dress cast down...
So much has fallen.
And I, who have listened for a step
All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,
Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending
On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers abounding.