The Universal Image
Gary Snyder evokes simple/common yet deep images in their poem “Milton by Firelight” and “Riprap”. In “Milton by Firelight”, Snyder writes in the second to last stanza:
“In ten thousand years the Sierras
Will be dry and dead, home of the scorpion.
Ice-Scratched slabs and bent trees.
No paradise, no fall,
Only the weathering land
The wheeling sky,
Man, with his Satan
Scouring the chaos of the mind.
Oh Hell!” (Snyder 290)
As the stanza goes on, each line evokes more and more of the image that is present, which is a desert with scorpions, bent trees and visually, has no beauty. This image being the second to last stanza, seems like it could be Snyder’s thought on how the Sierras will be a desert wasteland or it could potentially be a metaphor in that all things come to an end. A similar idea is seen in the poem “Riprap”:
“riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
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lost ponies with
Dragging saddles —
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a world
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things” (Snyder 290–291).
These lines of things create the image of the idea of universal insignificance, with lines like “Cobble of milky way, / straying planets,” (Snyder 291), “The worlds like an endless / four dimensional / Game of Go. (Snyder 291), and “ants and pebbles / In the thin loam, each rock a world” (Snyder 291).
The idea that all things come to an end and universal insignificance are related in the sense of perspective. There is the perspective that although we would like happiness, or anything good to never end, it sadly must end. This relates to universal insignificance in that the Earth and our Sun and Solar System will die out and we are only a very small fraction of the Milky Way which, in itself, is small perspectively, when compared to the ever expanding universe. The way that Snyder ends these two poems with these lines and stanza reinforce this idea of perspective by making us, the reader, think and share our perspectives on why Snyder would end these two poems in these ways.
