"Unveiling" Poetry Blog (11/13).

UnveilingIn the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planed table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet to learn.
     -Linda Pastan

     This is a very simple poem. It doesn't have any specific or special or flowery structures; it is simply 22 lines of run on sentences. The meaning is not difficult to discern, it is simply about the speaker's family who are dead and in a row in a cemetary where they used to live together. The speaker doesn't feel sad when he walks past their graves, rather a little jealous- as if they are all part of a secret that he can't know just yet. That idea is new to me, and it is different and a little depressing in some ways. The simple structure of the poem seems to fit with the simplicity of death- there's nothing overdone or formal about it, it just happens.
     The antecedant scenario is most likely Linda Pastan contemplating death in a new light or thinking about her passed away loved ones who she has yet to join. Maybe she sees that as being unfair like the speaker in this poem does.

"Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock" Poetry Blog.

Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock.
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green.
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings,
None of them are strange
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
     -Wallace Stevens

     First off, this poem confused me thoroughly, but I think that's part of the meaning that goes along with the title itself. The word "ceintures" was unfamiliar to me, so I looked it up and it means a girdle or belt. I didn't understand the colored night-gowns at all.
     I think it means that most people are the same and not fancy at night, and only the old "sailor" with experiences has strange and more exciting dreams. The antecedant scenario could be Wallace Stevens being awake himself late at night and feeling this disillusionment, or perhaps he was merely thinking about how people are at night. The overall tone of this poem is whimsical, trippy, or heavy like sleep itself. The descriptions, examples, and words used add to this tone because they feel strange and like "disillusionment at ten o'clock."
     "None are green. Or purple with green... with blue rings...." I did not understand this section of the poem at all. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to understand or if I'm overthinking it, but I'd like to know what Stevens is trying to say here.