Grass Memory and the Past Quotes

The poem begins in a pretty harsh manner. The grass calls for soldiers to dispose of their dead, so that it can get to work. It mentions a number of famous battles, but their specifics don't seem important to the grass. Nature doesn't remember; it just gets right down to the business of erasing the signs of the past.

When (living) humans enter the poem for the first and only time, we find out that the grass has been successful—maybe even a little too successful. When they look out the train window, they do not even notice that the land they see flying by is an old battlefield. The grass has covered up all evidence of the horrors that once existed on the now-green landscape.

We've heard these lines before from the grass, but now they take on an even more ominous tone. We know that the grass is successful in erasing the past from the landscape. Guess we'll have to rely on ourselves to do the remembering.