The Break-In

You are forever being robbed.

You are forever too rich for the world to bear;

tirelessly must she deploy her multiple urchins

to impoverish your life of possessions and years.

The kleptomanic days watch from the thickets;

behind your back the bars of all your optimisms

are being forced, your intimacies slyly plundered;

by voices unheard your privacy is being ransacked.

What's left?  Tidy up remnant dreams, take roster.

Where is the self, if it can be so easily

dismembered?  Reglazing each violation, weeks later,

you keep finding something else gone.

Wylie, Dan.  "The Break-In."  The Road Out.  Plumstead, South Africa: Snailpress, 1996.  10.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Some Thoughts:

1. What are some of the multiple meanings of the following words: deploy (line 3), bars (line 6), roster (line 9), dismembered, reglazing (line 11)?

2. How might this poem complement or contradict John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to which it alludes in line 8?

3. In what ways do you find this a regional poem, and it what ways does it speak universally?

4. How does the circular paradox of "finding" and "gone" in the final line reinforce the poem's theme?

This page was created by Stan Galloway, 11 May 2004, last updated 12 May 2004.  Contact me at sgallowa@bridgewater.edu.