Other aspects of the poem are manipulated to stress the objects at hand. Each object described—the light, apron, knives, and wooden block—receives a full sentence. Repetition, as perhaps the only explicit poetical device, appears halfway through the poem and again at the end, serving to emphasize the bloody patterns on the apron (“great continents of blood,/ The great rivers and oceans of blood” and “Where I am fed,/ Where deep in the night I hear a voice”).
The point of view in the poem is generalized and anonymous. Both the details of time and place are removed by the use of the opening word “sometimes” and the setting of the unnamed city or village street. The “I” in the poem could be anyone, and its anonymity draws the reader into a participation in the poet’s own meditation. The three sentences that begin with “there is” or “there are” emphasize the reality and permanence of common experience. Once each of the things named here is shown to actually exist, the poet moves into the less tangible connections brought about by the metaphoric comparisons of the images.
In this poem, the poet seems to be escaping from solitude, from the inability to connect with others. The people referred to individually are distant and alone: the convict in his tunnel, and “the cripple and the imbecile” brought to the altar. Only “they” who bring these afflicted people to the dark altar are mentioned in the plural. The word “they” often refers to everyone and no one at the same time. This nameless and faceless group serves as the assumed voice of authority; it is the group most often referred to in casual conversation. In desiring healing for the cripple and the imbecile, “they” seem to want these differences wiped away, to bring same homogenous identity to the entire population. Therefore, the presence of “they” contrasts with the individual’s identity that allows one to truly communicate with another.
The poet’s mentioning that “I am fed” refers to metaphysical nourishment. In this way, the objects take on a metaphorical meaning. The single source of light provides the only light in the poet’s solitude. Because it is “Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel,” Simic suggests that this small but sufficient light provides a hopeful exit from an otherwise dark perspective. As the poem’s first image, the light suggests that observation—the illumination of the scene and the interplay of that illumination upon other objects—provides a way out of darkness. Likewise, both the map created upon the apron and the dark church’s altar suggested by the shining knives give a sense of hope that comes from escape. That escape is neither guaranteed nor easy, but it offers hope.
These images may promise escape and comfort, but their connection to the violence that has created them makes them disturbing. The apron’s map is drawn with smeared blood, and the church is imagined from the glint of knives that drew that blood. Blood is an ambiguous image here, as it is both a necessary part of life and yet often a sign of violence. A person is not usually aware of the source of life—blood—unless the body is wounded or unless one considers a scene such as the butcher shop. Metaphorically , through a difficult act of thinking those things that surround people all the time are wrested from their “unmeaning” state and are made to mean something.
Central to understanding Simic’s poem is realizing his belief that poetry can be a way to think. By starting with the certainty of the physical, the poet moves into areas that are more uncertain, intangible, and transitory. Simic wants to emphasize that all that a person knows about the imaginative, intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual worlds is gained from observation of the surrounding things. As this poem begins with the certain objects of a butcher’s shop and progresses into less tangible considerations, it may symbolize the poet’s wish for readers to proceed in the same manner, from the material things of this world into a place that provides less certainty but more insight into the things around them. On one level, this poem does not supply a meaning as much as it invites the reader to create one out of the objects found within it. However, this approach does not mean that a poem by Simic can mean anything that anyone wants. The poet has sent the reader in a specific direction, and that direction has been influenced by the person who is already experiencing the butcher shop.
