Blackberrying

Song Meaning

The poem opens with a stark, almost desolate image: a lane empty save for blackberries, a scene that feels both abundant and isolating. The narrator describes a path "going down in hooks," suggesting a winding, perhaps treacherous, journey. The blackberries themselves are vividly rendered – "big as the ball of my thumb," "fat with blue-red juices" – but this richness is immediately complicated by the unsettling comparison, "dumb as eyes / Ebon in the hedges." This juxtaposition of natural bounty with a slightly sinister, watchful quality sets a peculiar tone. The central tension arises from the narrator's passive, almost reluctant, engagement with this environment. She notes the berries "squander on my fingers" and "accommodate themselves to my milk-bottle," implying an overwhelming, unasked-for abundance. The phrase "I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood" is particularly striking, suggesting an unwanted, almost primal connection to these fruits. Overhead, the "choughs in black, cacophonous flocks" and "bits of burnt paper" add a layer of disquiet, their "protesting" cries contrasting with the silent, heavy presence of the berries. The poem's craft excels in its sensory details and unsettling metaphors. The description of a berry bush so ripe it becomes "a bush of flies" is a powerful image of decay lurking within ripeness, a "honey-feast" that has stunned them into a kind of oblivion. The expected arrival of the sea, mentioned early on, recedes from view, replaced by a "sudden wind" that slaps "phantom laundry" in the face – an unexpected, domestic yet disorienting intrusion. The final vista is not of the sea, but of "orange rock" overlooking a "great space" filled with a "din like silversmiths / Beating and beating at an intractable metal." This ending transforms the earlier, almost claustrophobic immersion in the blackberry alley into a vast, almost overwhelming expanse of raw, unyielding force. The "intractable metal" suggests a struggle against something immense and unyielding, a stark contrast to the passive yielding of the berries. The poem's effectiveness lies in its ability to evoke a complex emotional landscape through precise, often jarring, imagery, moving from the tangible, almost suffocating abundance of nature to a sense of immense, abstract struggle.