Lying in a field, the speaker talks to the grass as if it were a living army, its sharp blades climbing the slope and covering graves. He asks the grass to wrap tightly over his heart and hold him there, because he wants to stay forever in this dazed, watchful state. One eye follows ants moving through the dense grass; the other watches the hillside seem to break into a shimmering wave of heat, with pale, unreal fingers of light dancing above it. The mood is trance-like and quietly ecstatic. There is a pull toward stillness, earth, and even death, but it feels more tender than morbid—a wish to dissolve into the landscape and never be pulled away.
Irradiations XV — Summary
O seeded grass, you army of little men Crawling up the long slope with quivering, quick blades of steel: You who storm millions of graves, tiny green tentacles of Earth, Interlace yourselves tightly over my heart, And do not let me go: For I would lie here forever and watch with one eye The pilgrimaging ants in your dull, savage jungles, The while with the other I see the stiff lines of the slope Break in mid-air, a wave surprisingly arrested, And above them, wavering, dancing, bodiless, colourless, unreal, The long thin lazy fingers of the heat.