An Old Story

In my first reading of "An Old Story", I was a a little confused on what it was about. The speaker in the poem was talking about something that was terrible and a million thoughts came racing into my head until I re-read it and figured out it could be a story about war. More specifically the aftermath of war. The lines "Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind, Livid, the land, and ravaged/The worst in us having taken over and broken the rest utterly down." gave me the impression that the speaker was describing war. In war, people are driven to hate the opposition and the battlefields are ravaged due to the fights. It reminded me of Vietnam where they would use Agent Orange in order to clear the jungles so American troops could see better. After war, the general attitude of the people becomes more joyful and eventually the society goes back to normal. The lines "And then our singning brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down from trees." show how the people recovered from the war that ensued.