How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #4
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. (15-16)
It's not that the wind, in this poem, really likes to beat up birds. It is just indifferent to the fates of humans and animals both.
Quote #5
The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. (16-18)
Again, the house won't actually shatter, but the sense that it somehow could is what matters. It's the pervasive sense of threat, yet again.
Quote #6
We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons. (21-24)
Violence can kindle a strange kind of life, at the same time that it's destructive. It forces the inanimate world to cry out, apparently in protest.