Waterfalls

Waterfalls symbolize ongoingness. They overwhelm the speaker due to their sheer number at the beginning of the poem, but she reveals that she interprets small "crowded streams" as waterfalls in her general state of sensory overstimulation (1).

Capsized Ships

Capsized ships symbolize the misfortune of an unexpected event. The speaker compares the mountains to the hulls of capsized ships, describing them as "slimehung and barnacled" (2). A ship's hull is meant to stay unseen below water, but in this comparison, the hull is exposed.Throughout the poem, the speaker fixates on such unique details that others would find insignificant, and makes unexpected comparisons as a result.

Wooden Clogs

Wooden clogs symbolize both human ingenuity and error. Compared to "another country" where "the clogs would all be tested" in terms of pitch, the clogs that the speaker hears in the poem sound "disparate" (40-41 and 37). The speaker hears the...