Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 7-9
[…] you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
- Going back to the start of line 7, we see that it's divided by a comma: the part before the comma refers to the world while the part after refers specifically to "you and I." So now we can definitely say that this part of the poem is dealing with a relationship of some sort, between whoever the "you" might be and the speaker ("I").
- And it's all connected—the world and its individuals, and trees for that matter. By lines 8-9 these connections become even clearer: "you and I are suddenly what the trees try / To tell us we are." Notice the colon in line 9 that looks similar to the way it's used in the first stanza. It's safe to say we have some recurring structural patterns here called parallelism. The recurring rhyming couplets, though they're different in rhyme, are also part of this technique. We're really getting the structural order of the poem that seems to be lacking a clear overall meaning we might be searching for. Tricky Ashbery…
- Still, we know that the trees are trying to tell these two people something. We don't know what that something is yet, but we do know there are some similarities between their relationship and the trees.
- We have more enjambment here that looks similar to the sort of form we saw earlier in the first and second stanzas. The concluding thoughts of one stanza lead us to the new thoughts of the next. It's all working together.
- Finally, check out "Form and Meter" for more about these rhymed couplets like "I" and "try."