Elizabeth Bishop and interconnectivity, and confinement.

The Mountain confronts nature with the language of loss.  It's striking because the diction conveys destruction amidst the unnamed something that remains constant and unchanged.  For example, words like "burn" (l.3), "sifted" (l. 26), and "clambering" (l. 19) speak to the active dissolution of things.  At the same time, words like "hardening" (l. ), "hang" (l. ), and the lines, "Shadows fall down/lights climb" (l. ) speak a certain perpetuity and permanence of the unnamed thing(s).

Mostly, the confinement comes from unrealized starts and questions that Bishop, for example, "start for a second" (l.2) only to "halt" (l.3).  This is mirrored in the repetition of "Tell me how old I am", the unanswered request for confirmation.  Without it, the speaker is confined to half starts and inbetweens.

I liked to think about this poem's interconnectivity in relation to its confining language.  Alexa mentioned the belief that all beings and matter of the earth is one, or nondual.  This presents the world many identities operating fluidly as one.  But, what if Bishop is asking if there is only one identity operating as many things, and, for some reason, is confined by the unbroken permanence of this identity?  Maybe as the speaker is confined without reprieve, so too are the nature elements that Bishop writes.  For example, light, hardened wings, unwiped waterfalls remain as does the speaker's question for self-awareness.  Bishop does not write these elements of nature as confined by unanswered questions, but perhaps the question pertains to them as it does the speaker.

This poem is tricky, I love it, I will keep reading it.  It's hard to write in the uncharted terms of the religious/philosophical idea of nondual.  Additionally, nondual in the context of religion represents freedom, or furthermore, peace.  However, Bishop's poem takes the identity piece and flips it, though I don't exactly know for what purpose.