Not Clear — Summary

It is not clear what if anything we will leave behind

for whom, what for, how long- it is not clear if we will have the right.

Instead, even the rain stops falling for a while and filters through the cracks

drops do drip and drip, brown into a marmalade jar, bricks rotting away

(since the distant past)

Everybody is out and about and you are cocooned, indoors shrouded by sirens, and echoes.

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Priego's poem opens with doubt. The speaker doesn't know what, if anything, people will leave behind, or for whom, or whether anyone will even have the right to leave something. Nothing is settled, and the repeated "it is not clear" keeps that feeling alive.

The images that follow are small and grim. Rain stops, then seeps through cracks and drips brown into a marmalade jar, an ordinary kitchen object turned into a bucket for something dirty. The bricks are rotting, and a quiet parenthesis says they have been for a long time, "since the distant past." Decay here seems slow and old, not sudden.

The last stanza sets two worlds side by side: everyone outside, busy, and "you," wrapped up indoors, surrounded by sirens and echoes. The poem doesn't say why, but the mood is isolation and unease. The speaker seems to be watching time and damage accumulate while feeling cut off, unsure whether any of it will matter.

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