I apologize to William and to all of you. My analysis seems a bit overwrought even to me, it might well be completely off-base and not remotely be what William means, and it will take me far more words to explain than the actual poem contains. Yet there it is and it refuses to get out of my face, so there is nothing to be done but type it up and share it. I think I can make a decent case for it from the text, at least. And god help you all, I shall.
As with William's last poem, my analysis of this one hangs on the title -- indeed, on a single word in the title: "screaming." If the poem were titled "Lost Words Gathered from the Wind" or in the wake of the wind or something similar, my analysis would be different. The poem minus the title, as Trish and Kyla noted, has a distant, disengaged quality. But read with the title, it gives me an entirely different view.
To me, a "screaming" wind speaks of hurricanes and tornadoes -- trees uprooted, signs wrenched from their hinges and sent hurtling into windows -- of destruction, disaster, turmoil and devastation. The "lost" words of this poem are "gathered" from "a screaming wind" -- to me, that signals that the words have been pulled together in the face of a unnamed disaster (I lean toward a personal one rather than an actual hurricane) that has wrenched them from their moorings and scattered them. Indeed, since the words are gathered "from" the wind, rather than in its wake, I tend to think the storm is still ongoing. Either way, I cannot look at the distant tone of the poem without remembering the maelstrom from which its words emerge.
This idea is continued (for me, anyway) in the first stanza. The narrator's memories are in fragments -- I'd guess they've been smashed by the screaming winds -- and he has pieced what is left of them together. But these "mosaics of fragmented memories" "pass for the past" -- they do not accurately reflect it. Nonetheless, both the present and future are affected by the narrator's carefully reconstructed view of the past. It "suppress[es]" the present. (Perhaps, in the wake of the storm, the present is too painful to do anything but suppress, and the narrator would rather focus on his reconstructed mosaic of memories. Perhaps this is also why the less-than-accurate recreation of the past is allowed to pass.) And though the future is unknown, the mosaic of memories "foreshadows" it . Given that the mosaic is created from pieced-together fragments, I cannot think that what is foreshadowed looks happy (but perhaps that's just me).
The first part of the second stanza -- "the world seems a scene behind glass, dramatically lit but distant", made me think of two things. First, it called to mind a reconstructed scene in a museum (calling back to the reassembled mosaics in the first stanza): i.e, the world as a reconstructed creation that might or might not accurately reflect reality. Moreover, though he sees it vividly (it is "dramatically lit") it feels distant and separated from him by a barrier (the glass). He can see the world, but he cannot connect with it, touch it, or influence it. He is not part of it – he can only look on. How real his perception might be is a "guessing game."
The second thing the reference to glass evoked for me was a bell jar. (Perhaps because I’ve recently read Plath’s novel). The image/metaphor of a bell jar evokes depression, which can result in the feeling of profound disconnectedness from the world that seems to me to be reflected in the second stanza. And that made me take a step back and ask -- is it the world behind glass or is it the narrator?
[ETA: I suppose it could also be read as a window, with the narrator trapped inside looking out on the world. There's something about the distance, though, and "scene" and the "dramatically lit" that makes me think of a display. (not a stage, because of the glass.) Thus I lean toward my museum display or my bell jar. Your mileage may vary, and probably does.]
Either way, however, the narrator feels disconnected and kept at a distance from the world.
In sum: Putting the title together with the stanzas, I see the narrator's world in turmoil, blown apart by some unnamed calamity, leaving a past that can only be looked at in a carefully reconstructed guise, a present he cannot confront, a future he can only guess at, and a reality that he observes, but from which he feels disconnected and cannot influence.
OK, I admit it. I've turned the poem into a personal microcosm, just like I always do. I really did try to read it as a broader view on humanity in general, honestly I did. But a couple of things just wouldn't let me. The screaming winds, for one thing. I can't read them as just life passing on or the march of time, etc. Life does not universally and constantly feel like a screaming wind is ripping through it -- sometimes it feels like a trudge in an oppressive fog. So the screaming wind speaks to me of the narrator's individual situation. It might not be what William meant at all, but damn it, that's what I see.
I think many or most of us reconstruct our pasts to some degree, picking and choosing, so the mosaic of the past I could pretty easily read as universal. The foreshadowing of the future, too. But again -- I submit the suppression of the present is not universal. Some people live entirely in the present and to hell with the past. So I also saw that as something as applying specifically to the narrator rather than to humanity at large. And since I just can't get the hell away from those damn screaming winds, I just have to feel that they're behind his suppression, his reconstruction of the past, the foreshadowing of the future.
Finally, the distance in the last stanza strikes me as reflecting the narrator's individual situation and not that of humanity in general. While I do think reality is rather a guessing game, and so I can easily construe that as being universally applicable, not so with the seeing the world as "distant" and "a scene behind glass." I do not think that is a universal feeling -- not everyone feels so very disconnected. But this narrator does. Again, I go back to the screaming winds, and I see depression as well as mere distance. Again, something particular to the narrator and not humanity in general.
