I've read this poem and am having trouble understanding what is happening. Could anyone help me figure out what its talking about?
The Vanishing Red
He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with.'
You can't get back and see it as he saw it.
It's too long a story to go into now.
You'd have to have been there and lived it.
They you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling millstone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
'Come, John,' he said, 'you want to see the wheel-pint?'
He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs alone--and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit all right.
The miller caught an Amerindian sneaking round his mill. We are not told why he was there. The miller murdered him, but doesn't seem to see his act as such.
Why is Action capitalized? It's a place? And while we are at it, why is Red capitalized and man is not? Oh, yeah, what's up with wheel-pint and wheel-pit?
I'm guessing those are typos and Acton, Mass. (USA) is intended?
He is said to have been the last Red Man
In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed-
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
"Whose business,-if I take it on myself,
Whose business-but why talk round the barn?-
When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with."
You can't get back and see it as he saw it.
It's too long a story to go into now.
You'd have to have been there and lived it.
Then you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red Man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
"Come, John," he said, "you want to see the wheel pit?"
He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came up stairs alone-and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch-then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right.
What's 'talk round the barn'? Evade the issue?
This is a strange run-on sentence:
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red Man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
Yeah, it's murder all right. We aren't really told what the Red Man was doing there, or why he was killed. Racially motivated in any case, I would think.
Is The Red Man and John the same person....confused?
Yup. We aren't told exactly, but I envision that Injun John is found to be in the mill and the conversation went something like,
MILLER - "Hey, John, what are you doing in my mill?"
JOHN - "Yikes! You scared me, Mr Miller. I was just curious how the mill worked. How the water turns the stone and grinds the grain, I mean."
MILLER - "No problem. Come on over here and take a look down this hole."