Written as a letter to a friend, the poem speaks from inside a prison the speaker calls a “green jail.” The setting feels strangely alive: his words smell of grass, his dreams get wet in rain. That mix of confinement and sensory freshness runs through the whole piece. The speaker is not simply describing his cell; he is describing a state where distinctions blur. Life and death have no clear boundary. He watches grass, rain, and flowers die and then return, almost magically, with each new day. The mood is intimate and melancholy, but not entirely despairing. There is tenderness in the address to the friend, and a kind of awed attention to the natural world. The poem suggests that even in captivity, the speaker finds himself caught up in a larger cycle of loss and renewal, though that cycle may feel as strange as it is comforting.
Letter from Prison — Summary
My dear friend! This letter for you I’ve written down here in this green jail Where my word smells like grass. And my dreams are getting wet in the rain.
Here, where the life and death have no demarcation line. Here, where the grass, the rain and flowers die in front of your eyes and are born again into a day as if by magic.