Marking Time -
- Signifies a sequence of love poems - relationships
- Steadiness, elemental pattern
- Changes in time
- Written in present tense - actively present verbs
- Occasional use of past tense
- 14 lines - draws similarity to sonnet
- “Marking time” - musical connotations / significance of event / physical representation
- Idea of recognition, control, ownership
- Verb, present participle
- Blending of time - past / present / future
- Enjambment frequently used - emphasis of fluidity, contrasts disturbance of scar
Stanza 1 -
- Possessive pronoun “your” - direct address
- “Finally fading” - alliteration, emphasis, slowness of time (one/two syllables before phrase)
- “Our memory” - she has mark though they both have the memory
- “Fading / in the way that our memory will” - significance of time, acceptance of change
- “Lust” / “laid us out on the floor” - personification
- “Bed” / “instead” - rhyming couplet, reinforces togetherness and spontaneity
- “Where we worked” - emphasis of togetherness, sense of effort and tire
- “Scar” - implication of love
- “Two tattered flags flying from your spine’s mast” - nautical metaphor, association with
women, flag - ownership and colonialism
- “Brand-burn” - hyphenated, alliteration
- “Secret in the small of your back” - sibilance - alludes to intimacy and love
^ “secret” - emphasis of meaning, exclusivity
- “Brand” - ownership, vulnerability and need for control
- Consistent references to back
Stanza 2 -
- “Trace them now” - intimate, revisiting, taking ownership of the moment
- “Feel the disturbance again” - skin
- “Still waters of your skin broken” - naturality, nautical imagery, sibilance - calmness
- Signifies a sequence of love poems - relationships
- Steadiness, elemental pattern
- Changes in time
- Written in present tense - actively present verbs
- Occasional use of past tense
- 14 lines - draws similarity to sonnet
- “Marking time” - musical connotations / significance of event / physical representation
- Idea of recognition, control, ownership
- Verb, present participle
- Blending of time - past / present / future
- Enjambment frequently used - emphasis of fluidity, contrasts disturbance of scar
Stanza 1 -
- Possessive pronoun “your” - direct address
- “Finally fading” - alliteration, emphasis, slowness of time (one/two syllables before phrase)
- “Our memory” - she has mark though they both have the memory
- “Fading / in the way that our memory will” - significance of time, acceptance of change
- “Lust” / “laid us out on the floor” - personification
- “Bed” / “instead” - rhyming couplet, reinforces togetherness and spontaneity
- “Where we worked” - emphasis of togetherness, sense of effort and tire
- “Scar” - implication of love
- “Two tattered flags flying from your spine’s mast” - nautical metaphor, association with
women, flag - ownership and colonialism
- “Brand-burn” - hyphenated, alliteration
- “Secret in the small of your back” - sibilance - alludes to intimacy and love
^ “secret” - emphasis of meaning, exclusivity
- “Brand” - ownership, vulnerability and need for control
- Consistent references to back
Stanza 2 -
- “Trace them now” - intimate, revisiting, taking ownership of the moment
- “Feel the disturbance again” - skin
- “Still waters of your skin broken” - naturality, nautical imagery, sibilance - calmness
