Monsoon Season
Yusef Komunyakaa
5 10 15 20 25 |
A river shines in the jungle’s wet leaves. The rain’s finally let up but whenever wind shakes the foliage it starts to fall. The monsoon uncovers troubled seasons we tried to forget. Dead men slip through bad weather, stamping their muddy boots to wake us, their curses coming easier. There’s a bend in everything, in elephant grass & flame trees, raindrops pelting the sand-bagged bunker like a muted gong. White phosphorus° washed from the air, wind sways with violet myrtle,° beating it naked. Soaked to the bone, jungle rot brings us down to earth. We sit in our hooches° with too much time, where grounded choppers can’t fly out the wounded. Somewhere nearby a frog begs a snake. I try counting droplets, stars that aren’t in the sky. My poncho feels like a body bag. I lose count. Red leaves whirl by, the monsoon unburying the dead. |
Making Meanings
Monsoon Season
1. How would you characterize the speaker’s mood? Cite passages to support your opinion.
2. Where is the poem’s speaker? What are the “troubled/seasons we tried to forget” (lines 5–6)?
3. How might the rainy weather have influenced the speaker’s thoughts and feelings?
4. What specifically triggers the speaker’s memory of past experiences?
5. In an image of sound, the speaker of “Monsoon Season” says the raindrops pelted the bunker “like a muted gong” (line 13). In your own words, tell what the sound of the raindrops was like to the speaker. Why is the image surprising?
6. When the speaker says “I lose count” (line 27), what does he explicitly say he is counting? What does he imply he has been counting?
7. Review your Quickwrite. In what ways were the images in the poem similar to or different from the ones you wrote down?