The Farewell by Edward Field

They say the ice will hold
so there I go,
forced to believe them by my act of trusting people,
stepping out on it,

and naturally it gaps open
and I, forced to carry on coolly
by my act of being imperturbable,
slide erectly into the water wearing my captain's helmet,
waving to the shore with a sad smile,
"Goodbye my darlings, goodbye dear one,"
as the ice meets again over my head with a click.

In the poem "The Farewell" by Edward Field, the author shows how quickly one's life can end because of a simple mistake. When I first read it, I was intrigued by the immense effect that such a short poem achieved. The immediate sensation I got after reading the poem was one of emptiness, as it ended quickly on a sad note. The lines that had the greatest effect on me were the last three, in that the author elongates a moment that could have occurred in a split second in order to give the reader the same feeling as the narrator.
Although this poem may not necessarily be literal in the chain of events, I feel that it is symbolic of the narrator's tendency to trust people too easily. In the poem, the narrator slips into an iced lake because he trusted the people that said the ice would hold. However, the beginning of the second stanza is a bit difficult to understand, especially when he says "I, forced to carry on coolly / by my act of being imperturbable..." I believe the author is trying to say that even though the ice started to crack, he continued because he completely trusted the people and did not think that the ice would break completely. Although this description was slightly extreme, it allows the reader to see the extent of his tendency to trust people no matter what.
In order to achieve this effect, the author uses free verse to make it less poetic and more realistic. Also, he personifies the ice throughout the poem, in that it seems to punish the narrator for trusting the people that told him the ice would not break. I feel that the entire poem is a metaphor, in that it represents the symbolic idea of "walking on ice" when he chooses to trust people too easily. Lastly, throughout the poem, the author uses imagery to portray the frightening and surreal situation that the narrator was faced with.
After analyzing the meaning of the poem, I feel that it is very well-written and it seems that the author truly serves his purpose of evoking a certain emotion through the narrator's slip into the ice water. Due to this metaphor, the poem achieves a great emotional importance and for this reason, I would recommend the poem to others and am curious to read other poems by this author.