Although the arrangement of this poem’s lines are Shakespearean in style, the evolution of the thematic subject’s (love’s) movement from one poetic scene to the next appears non-traditional. The speaker speaks of love in the informative. Love is understood by the speaker as being immaterial and therefore useless. Love is spoken of in a way that leaves no space for concession. The speaker does not begin to locate themselves into the poem until the last line of the second quatrain—“Even as I speak...” (line 8)—but even then, they do not return until the last line of the final quatrain. This “dislocation” (which here denotes a meditated abstraction of the speaker from the emphasizes the impersonal tone of the poem; the impersonal tone of the poem is further augmented by statements held in it’s final three lines which create two scenarios transaction—consequences of two different causative possibilities: need of release from physically debilitating/immobilizing pain or unsettling irritation. Both possibilities create scenarios where love is exchanged for simple needs: peace and food. And the final line of the poem does little to refute the likelihood of either. The subjunctive clause “I do not think I would,” (line 14) ends the sonnet with loose conviction.

Reminds me of the ways Dubois' was oriented in academe alongside his Blackening of American Sociology. How he had to reckon with the ways Blackness was deemed immeasurable and thus presented/perceived as myth or only "real" through the insidious ideologies/beliefs/assumptions of an inherently racist [white] American consciousness. I am also reminded of the incredible work of Ida B. Wells and Zora Neale Hurston.

How does being "ordinary" limit one's opportunity to secure ancestral spaces? Does the phrase "ancestral halls" refer to estates belonging to esteemed families? Does it imply substantive movement towards familial or sociocultural legacy? Does it suggest that it is rare that someone "ordinary" is able to walk amongst commingling reverberations of history?

These opening lines resonate with me in the ways they establish paradox: clerks file information that is meant to be kept and there is a kind of inherent stillness in being “kept”—to be kept is to remain and therefore to stay—but here the speaker does not think that those employed to file information will still be as they were when he left them. As readers we are made to believe that those who are employed to file away are not supposed to do such a job for a long period of time. Also, where is “there?”

The unordered/unpredictable as an affront to science. There is a parent-child relationship established between the economy of forces and “anarchical” force.

What constitutes “ultimate energy?”

Connection: The Sovereignty of Quiet—Kevin Quashie

Restructures energy—re: chaos vs ordered substance

How is “force” here defined?

As it concerns imperial/colonial force(s) (within and without nations/geopolitical spheres)?

This is an interesting phrase; In this context, what exactly does it mean to intentionally think on disorder and or whatever thing is being acknowledged as a substance (knowledge perhaps) without form/structure?