Haze — Summary

in the haze of the afternoon drinking too much my empty wishing

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Three short lines give us one slow, blurry moment: an afternoon, a drink or several, and a feeling of wishing for something without any real hope behind it. The speaker doesn't say what they want, and that gap is part of the point. The wishing is "empty," so it seems to have lost its object, or its force, or both.

The word "haze" does double duty. It can describe warm, murky afternoon light, but it also suggests the fogginess of drinking. The two blur together, so the weather outside and the state of the speaker's mind feel like the same thing. The phrase "drinking too much" is blunt and a little self-accusing, as if the speaker is noticing their own habit without making excuses for it.

The mood is listless and quietly sad. Nothing happens, and the poem doesn't push toward any answer. It simply sits in that drifting, unproductive stretch of time, and the lack of punctuation or a firm ending lets the feeling trail off.

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