This Poem was written by Countee Cullen. He is writing to explain that he has lost his beloved, and his life is full of misery without her.
All through
an empty place I go,
And find
her not in any room;
The candles
and the lamps I light
Go down
before a wind of gloom.
The first paragraph tells how the writer looks all throughout his house, hoping that by some miracle, he will find his lost love. When he lights the candles to see if she is in the room, he finds that she is not, and he blows out the candles, disappointed.
Thick-spraddled
lies
the dust about,
A fit,
sad place to write her name
Or draw
her face the way she looked
That
legendary night she came.
The second paragraph
basically shows that the writer misses his love so
much, that he finds himself writing her name and drawing her picture everywhere,
even in the dust that collects in his house.
The third paragraph is the writer complaining that his house is falling apart, and the rent collectors keep knocking at his door and telling him to pay the rent for his damaged house.The old house crumbles bit by bit;
Each day I hear the ominous thud
That says another rent is there
For winds to pierce and storms to flood.
Here, he is saying that he is too depressed to even pick fruit to eat, and he just lets it grow until it is so ripe that it falls off of the trees, and he only eats it then.My orchards groan and sag with fruit;
Where, Indian-wise, the bees go round;
I let it rot upon the bough;
I eat what falls upon the ground
The heavy
cows go laboring
In agony
with clotted teats;
My hands
are slack; my blood is cold;
I marvel
that my heart still beats.
The character in the poem works on a farm, and since he has been so depressed about losing his love, milking the cows seems very hard and he is amazed that he is still alive and doing this.
I have
no will to weep or sing,
No least
desire to pray or curse;
The loss
of love is a terrible thing;
They
lie who say that death is worse.
Finally, in the last paragraph, he is saying that since he is in such a state of misery, he has no mind to cry or even write poetry. He says that he'd rather die than go through the horrible pain that he is experiencing with his loss of love.