“Moira” by Phillis Levin (1995)

“Moira” is the first poem in The Afterimage. Like “The End of April,” which appears later in the volume, the poem discusses loss: “The heart says: I cannot / The soul says: I am not” (Lines 3-4). The two poems also share images that function as metaphors. Descriptions of a window echo the juxtaposition of positive and negative emotions. Its “frame / once held dawn” (Lines 5-6) but now “gleams all night in desolation” (Line 7). The fresh fruit on a nearby tree is so beautiful it hurts, much like the landscape at the beginning of “The End of April” but the speaker suggests that Moira embrace it, ending the poem in a more hopeful manner than the latter poem.

“Cumulus” by Phillis Levin (1997)

This poem, written two years after those in The Afterimage, is also a meditation on natural object/s, used as a metaphor to discuss humanity. Just as “The End of April” focuses on the damaged eggshell as equivalent to the speaker’s prior relationship, “Cumulus” centers on cumulous clouds as reflective of human labor. Levin’s speaker notes that while “we are true / to ourselves so rarely” (Lines 10-11) and seem mainly to “go / as carelessly, as helplessly, finally / Too full of time” (Lines 8-9), the cloud enriches the world around it by being “Open to darkness” (Line 12).