All I Was Doing Was Breathing (Style)

Style

Imagery

Some of the effect of the poem comes from its contrasting images. Line 2 emphasizes the minute aspects of the divine being that the speaker worships; she yearns for "every hair of that dark body." In line 4, however, the image of the minute gives way to a vast, cosmic image, of the face of the divine being that is "like the moon." By swinging the reader's awareness from the tiny to the immense, the poem conveys the entire range of the divine.

A somewhat similar swing between opposites can be seen in the direct references to the god. Krishna is represented clearly in human form. He possesses a human body, and he walks past the poet's house. But he is also represented in abstract, rather than concrete, terms as the "Dancing Energy," which describes not a human form but something more immense and fundamental, the dynamic consciousness that is the underlying reality of all things in the universe. Once again, the reader's awareness switches between a localized point — a human body — and the infinity of the "Dancing Energy."

The poem also contains significant imagery about eyes and seeing. The poet looks directly at her beloved with her eyes, not through some inner process of contemplation, of considered thought. It is through the beams that emanate from her eyes that the divine takes hold of her. She also sees his face; it is the visual image of him that is important to her, not his speech or anything else about him. And she describes her life now that she is devoted to the divine in terms of her eyes: "my eyes have their own life."