Poetry explication anyone?

Question:Can anyone tell me their interpretation of this.........

Still Without Life

The mind’s circle increases death,
Not weakly, but with
A close and capital waiting.

Death is your ignorance of constants and horribles, and surely
Your knowledge of this, and walking behind a friend,
Are the same thing.

Never touch, never see, never counter in all your life
The solid that owns everything;
Only the objects, not us, have
The purpose to live like people,
The patience to love like boards.

-Rosalie Moore
THE YALE YOUNGER POETS ANTHOLOGY
Page 97

Thanks,
Parth

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Can anyone tell me their interpretation of this.........

Still Without Life

The mind’s circle increases death,
Not weakly, but with
A close and capital waiting.

Death is your ignorance of constants and horribles, and surely
Your knowledge of this, and walking behind a friend,
Are the same thing.

Never touch, never see, never counter in all your life
The solid that owns everything;
Only the objects, not us, have
The purpose to live like people,
The patience to love like boards.

-Rosalie Moore
THE YALE YOUNGER POETS ANTHOLOGY
Page 97

Thanks,
Parth

As a piece of communication, it's lousy. I can take a wild guess at what she means, but I have no way of really knowing. I wonder if even the poet knew what she meant by every line. For instance: "a capital waiting" doesn't make sense with any sense of the word I could find in the dictionary. Perhaps it's supposed to mean "first in importance", but it's still a misusage.

OK, then, the wild guess:

The mind's circle is the boundaries of thought. The mind's thoughts range over a certain scope, but do not go outside it. Certain thoughts are "outside the mind's circle". This limitation increases "death."

How so? Well, what is death, but ignorance: ignorance of everything, really (complete lack of consciousness), but including ignorance of "constants" (things that are always the same) and things that are horrible. Now, death itself is both a constant and a "horrible", and we know of it, yet throughout life, we put this out of mind. We live as if life means something, not as if we will die and drop out of existence. How can you walk behind a friend and care about the friend, or care about anything? Only by putting Death out of mind--beyond the circle, as it were. But this enforced ignorance is itself Death. Death is ignorance (of constants and horribles). This is how the mind's circle increases death, by making the ignorance deliberate and palpable.

The solid that owns everything, I hazard, is the mass of the universe. We die and return to it. But we never touch this fact, see it, or counter it. We simply ignore it, and live as if we are not a part of the universal solid. But we are, and by our deliberate ignorance, we make ourselves more dead than the inanimate objects that are simply a part of it.

Only the objects have purpose, whatever that purpose is, because only they do not deny their true existence. as part of the universal solid. Only they could have the "purpose to live like people" try to, but don't (because they can't accept the fundamental facts of existence). And only these objects can have the patience to love like boards. What does it mean to love like boards? Well, love is taking another person to be a part of you, caring about them like you care about yourself. But you are temporary and your love is temporary and you will both die. You can only truly love if you embrace the eternal and your patience is forever. Boards are part of the universe and everything that is a part of the univers(al solid) is a part of the boards as well. That is love.