From outside a dark red asylum, the speaker watches spring sunlight hit the building with a harsh, almost insane energy. Noises and shrieks spill from the windows, and one patient stands howling with a voice that mixes happiness and fear, as if his emotion mocks itself. His ragged hat and long white feather feel both absurd and strangely innocent. The speaker is disturbed less by the patient’s howl than by what he sees next: a guard with a blank, flabby face and small dead-looking eyes. The guard walks away with a calm sense of power, “contentedly playing with other men’s wings.” By the end, the speaker cannot separate the screaming man from the guard. The mood is feverish and unsettling. It suggests that the real insanity may not belong only to the patient, but to the whole system around him.
Insanity — Summary
Like a vivid hyperbole, The sun plunged into April’s freshness, And struck its sparkling madness Against the barnlike dejection Of this dark red insane asylum. A softly clutching noise Stumbled from the open windows. Now and then obliquely reeling shrieks Rose, as though from men To whom death had assumed An inexpressibly kindly face. A man stood at one window, His gaunt face trembling underneath A feverish jauntiness. A long white feather slanted back Upon his almost shapeless hat, Like an innocent evasion. Hotly incessant, his voice Methodically flogged the April air: A voice that held the clashing bones Of happiness and fear; A voice in which emotion Sharply ridiculed itself; A monstrously vigorous voice Mockingly tearing at life With an unanswerable question.
Hollowed out by his howl, I turned and saw an asylum guard. His petulantly flabby face Rolled into deathlike chips of eyes. He bore the aimless confidence Of one contentedly playing with other men’s wings. He walked away; the man above still shrieked. I could not separate them.