In the poem "Lament," explain and comment on and explain five literal devices (metaphor, simile, personification, etc.)."Lament" by Gillian Clarke

"Lament" by Gillian Clarke, uses a variety of poetic devices to
describe the many faces of war, all of which she mourns.

Ms. Clarke
makes the following comment about her poem:

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‘Lament’ is an elegy, an expression of grief. It can be a
sad, military tune played on a bugle. The poem uses the title as the start of a list of lamented
people, events, creatures and other things hurt in the war, so after the word ‘lament’, every
verse, and 11 lines, begin with ‘for’.

War can’t be waged without
grave damage to every aspect of life. All the details in the poem came from reports in the media.
There were newspaper photographs of cormorants covered with oil - ‘in his funeral silk’. ‘The
veil of iridescence on the sand’ and ‘the shadow on the sea’ show the spreading stain of oil from
bombed oil wells. The burning oil seemed to put the sun out, and poisoned the land and the sea.
The ‘boy fusilier who joined for the company,’ and ‘the farmer’s sons, in it for the music’, came
from hearing radio interviews with their mothers. The creatures were listed by Friends of the
Earth as being at risk of destruction by oil pollution, and ‘the soldier in his uniform of fire’
was a horrific photograph of a soldier burnt when his tank was bombed. The ashes of language are
the death of truth during war

"The
soldier in his uniform of fire" refers to a soldier burning when his vehicle is bombed. This is
an example of a metaphor.

"The cormorant in his funeral silk" uses
personification to describe death surrounding the bird, describing that it has put on funeral
garb in death's wake.

"The veil of iridescence on the sand" is
imagery that describes the oil slick on the sand from ships being bombed in the water and washing
up on the shore (or "bombed oil wells"). (Kuwait lies on the edge of the Persian
Gulf.)

"...the sun put out" is an example of hyperbole. It would be
impossible to do so: this is figurative language, not to be taken literally, and probably refers
to the smoke from bombings that seems to obliterate the sun before the dust
settles.

"For the ocean's lap with its mortal stain" uses
onomatopoeia with the use of "lap," which brings to mind that constancy of the ocean, forever
moving even in spite of war, but not unchanged ("mortal
stain").

"For [the green turtle's eggs] laid in their nest of
sickness" is a paradox, a contradiction: a nest is supposed to be a safe place where eggs can
rest with their mother until they hatch; with the war raging, the nest is a dangerous
place.

All of these devices are used to bring pictures to the mind
of the reader so that they might visualize what the poet saw in reports on the Gulf War. The
devastation is far-reaching, touching not only the humans pitted against one another, but also
the earth and its "other occupants."

The poem has a haunting affect
on the reader because the images are so vivid. Those damaged by war are brought to the forefront
of the reader's mind, and the powerful verse leaves the reader shaken and touched, by things
occurring half a world away.