Lyrical Comparison: “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”

            Upon first reading “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”, I was immediately reminded of an Iron and Wine song entitled “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” (whose lyrics are posted below thanks to www.azlyrics.com). Much like Pound, song writer Sam Beam chronicles the forceful push to grow up and questions where that push may lead. Lines, “Have I found you? Or lost you?” similarly depict uncertainty in a looming relationship each character cannot let go of. Also, each work romanticizes the past with deep feeling while bleakly cursing the present.

“Flightless Bird American Mouth” - Iron and Wine

I was a quick-wit boy

Diving too deep for coins

All of your street light eyes

Wide on my plastic toys

Then when the cops closed the fair

I cut my long baby hair

Stole me a dog-eared map

And called for you everywhere

Have I found you?

Flightless bird, jealous, weeping

Or lost you?

American mouth

Big pill looming

Now I'm a fat house cat

Nursing my sore blunt tongue

Watching the warm poison rats

Curl through the wide fence cracks

Pissing on magazine photos

Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean

Blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you?

Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding

Or lost you?

American mouth

Big pill, stuck going down

            

            In both pieces, the theme of deeply held nostalgia runs rampant, saturating the words in empty discomfort. “River-Merchant’s Wife” directly addresses her absent other half, telling the story of their life together. The first stanza beautifully depicts their carefree childhood colored by life’s simple joys and enlivened by young imagination: “I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. / You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse.” Pound portrays the youth as “Two small people, without dislike or suspicion” to embody innocence that knows no hatred. These early memories build a nostalgic foundation for their impending relationship.

            The next stanza abruptly shifts the mood from carefree adolescence to forced adulthood of dreaded obligation. It seems the speaker and her childhood friend are arranged to be married at the tender age of fourteen. Once free of responsibility, they are now slapped with the burden of marriage and may only dream of their younger days. Such a serious life change seems to awkwardly stiffen what was once an easy relationship. However, the river-merchant’s wife decides to take change into stride and find love when, “At fifteen I stopped scowling.” From this point, she seems to be swept into feelings of love…perhaps puppy love. Pound’s repetition of the word “forever” in line twelve portrays her lasting naivety and aching need for permanence.

            Despite this need, she is abandoned by her love, bringing the readers up to date. For five months, she has been painfully counting the days and taking solace (well, sort of) in the natural beauty reminiscent of childhood. The last stanza is, to me, the most strikingly beautiful as the lost soul is surrounded by nature’s dying splendor. From the prematurely falling leaves to “the paired butterflies already yellow with August”, the natural world further isolates the speaker’s agonizing loss and desperate yearning for familiarity. The simple line, “They hurt me. I grow older,” plainly states the meaning of previously flowery words as she simply begs her other half to come home.