Review on "Forgive my Guilt", by Robert P.T Tristram Coffin

Forgive my Guilt

Not always sure what things called sins may be, I am sure of one sin I have done. It was years ago, and I was a boy, I lay in the frostflowers with a gun, The air ran blue as the flowers, I held my breath, Two birds on golden legs slim as dream things Ran like quicksilver on the golden sand, My gun went off, they ran with broken wings Into the sea, I ran to fetch them in, But they swam with their heads high out to sea, They cried like two sorrowful high flutes, With jagged ivory bones where wings should be. For days I heard them when I walked that headland Crying out to their kind in the blue, The other plovers were going over south On silver wings leaving these broken two. The cries went out one day; but I still hear them Over all the sounds of sorrow in war or peace I ever have heard, time cannot drown them, Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease. Two airy things forever denied the air! I never knew how their lives at last were spilt, But I have hoped for years all that is wild, Airy, and beautiful will forgive my guilt.

By : Robert P.T Tristam Coffin

REVIEW:

In the Forgive my guilt poem we, the readers experience an adult reflecting on the time in his past which haunts him. In the poem the poet writes his past experience about him as a young boy laying down in the snow with a gun which he fired that damages two bird and he lives them in misery after they escape into the water with broken and damaged wings, and he rears their loud wails which he compares to ' sorrowful high flutes', that haunt him even in the future, and this nightmare becomes he's reason and motivation to ask for forgivness for his great sin of leaving the infured birds to suffer. Even after the birds die the poet can still hear their cries and his regret for his actions consume his mind and to him for what he has done he requires forgivenes because he is eternally sorry for his horrendous actions.