Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Gwen Harwood’s "Last Meeting" is a deeply reflective and poignant meditation on love, loss, and the inexorable passage of time. The poem explores the final encounter between two lovers, weaving together the emotional weight of their parting with the broader natural and philosophical frameworks that surround them. Through its intricate imagery, intertextual references, and philosophical musings, Harwood creates a layered narrative that captures the tension between personal experience and the universal truths of existence.

The poem opens with a vivid, elemental image: "Shadows grazing eastward melt from their vast sun-driven flocks / into consubstantial dusk." The transition from light to darkness sets the tone for the poem, symbolizing the end of a relationship and the inevitable movement from passion to resignation. The "sun-driven flocks" evoke life and vitality, while "consubstantial dusk" suggests a merging of opposites—light and dark, day and night, love and loss. This blending underscores the theme of transformation, as the lovers face the dissolution of their bond.

Harwood situates the lovers in a harsh, windswept landscape: "A snow wind flosses the bleak rocks, / strips from the gums their rags of bark." The imagery of winter, with its barrenness and cold, mirrors the emotional desolation of the lovers’ parting. The stripping of bark from trees symbolizes the exposure and vulnerability inherent in their final meeting. The natural world becomes a reflection of their inner turmoil, its starkness emphasizing the gravity of the moment.

The poem moves to the "littoral zone of day and night," a liminal space that mirrors the transitional state of the lovers’ relationship. The "light’s turncoat margin" reinforces the idea of betrayal and change, as the world shifts from one state to another. This imagery of boundaries—between light and dark, land and sea, day and night—parallels the boundary the lovers are crossing, from a shared connection to separation. The description of "nightfall-eddying waters" and "the cold eyes of the sea-god?s daughters" imbues the scene with a mythic quality, suggesting that their parting is both deeply personal and cosmically significant.

As the lovers walk along the shoreline, they tread "the wrack of grass that once / a silver-bearded congregation / whispered about our foolish love." This evokes a memory of their love as something once vital and thriving, now reduced to remnants. The "silver-bearded congregation" suggests wisdom and age, perhaps the judgment of others who saw their love as folly. The imagery of grass and whispers further emphasizes the transience and fragility of human emotions against the backdrop of time.

The man’s voice, described as ringing with "astringent melancholy," introduces a tone of philosophical detachment. His words—"Could hope recall, or wish prolong / the vanished violence of folly?"—contemplate the impossibility of recapturing the intensity of their past love. The use of "violence" to describe their love suggests both its passion and its destructiveness, while "folly" casts it in a retrospective light of futility. His speech moves into a reflection on time and guilt: "Minute by minute summer died; / time?s horny skeletons have built / this reef on which our love lies wrecked." The metaphor of summer’s death and the reef constructed from "time?s horny skeletons" captures the inexorable decay of their relationship, while "cardinal guilt" suggests a shared culpability for its demise.

Harwood’s invocation of Ludwig Wittgenstein—"The world, said Ludwig Wittgenstein, / is everything that is the case"—introduces a philosophical lens through which to view their parting. Wittgenstein’s statement grounds the poem in the tangible and the real, suggesting that their love, like everything else, is subject to the immutable laws of existence. The subsequent lines contrast the warmth of human connection—"the warmth of human lips and thighs"—with the "lifeless cold of outer space," emphasizing the tension between the intimacy of their shared past and the vast, indifferent universe.

The poem concludes with a series of images that encapsulate the speaker’s grief: "this windy darkness; Scorpio / above, a watercourse of light; / the piercing absence of one face / withdrawn for ever from my sight." The "windy darkness" reflects her inner desolation, while Scorpio—a constellation associated with passion and transformation—symbolizes the lingering presence of their love, now reduced to memory. The "piercing absence of one face" captures the sharp pain of loss, as the speaker acknowledges the permanence of their separation.

Structurally, the poem’s tightly woven stanzas mirror the careful balance of its themes, with each quatrain offering a self-contained reflection while contributing to the overall narrative. The rhyme scheme, though subtle, adds a sense of cohesion and inevitability, reinforcing the idea that the lovers’ journey is part of a larger, inexorable process.

"Last Meeting" is ultimately a meditation on the intersection of personal and universal truths. Harwood’s exploration of love and loss is grounded in the immediacy of human emotion yet elevated through her use of myth, philosophy, and natural imagery. The poem captures the complexity of saying goodbye, blending detachment with longing, reflection with raw feeling. Through its rich language and profound insights, "Last Meeting" speaks to the enduring power of love, even in its absence, and the ways in which human connections are shaped by the relentless passage of time.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...