Question

can someone please help me analyze what the black fruit dripping sap from the branches of lighting means in the first stanza
thank you


Passover: The Injections

Clouds pass over, endless,
black fruit dripping
sap from the branches
of lightning.

We lie down in the field,
thousands of us,
never mind the rain.

Soldiers come toward us,
groups of three or four.
The wind opens their long coats.
Underneath, their uniforms are black.

They bend over to the babies.
The babies cry,
for a little while.

"We are living in Biblical times,"
a woman says.

Answer 1

http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1237059888

Black is often the color symbolizing death in western lit.

Read through the help you've already been given and turn your imagination loose. What would you feel like if you were literally on the ground with black stuff dripping all over you?

Think. Imagine.

Answer 2

"black fruit dripping" could also mean the dark clouds are dripping with rain.

Answer 3

but what does rain have to do with the poem

Answer 4

It doesn't...it is a metaphor.

Answer 5

a metaphor to what

Answer 6

to the clouds, it is just describing the scene. it is using the metaphor "black fruit dripping" to say the black clouds were dripping rain.

Answer 7

Peter, I answered this question for you yesterday. It is not rain.

http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1237059888

Answer 8

i understand the lighting but i don't get the black fruit

Answer 9

Peter, what happens when people are shot or blown up or slashed with sabers?