Belfast Tune

Here's a girl from a dangerous town
She crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
when someone gets hurt.

She folds her memories like a parachute.
Dropped, she collects the peat
and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot
here where they eat.

Ah, there's more sky in these parts than, say,
ground. Hence her voice's pitch,
and her stare stains your retina like a gray
bulb when you switch

hemispheres, and her knee-length quilt
skirt's cut to catch the squal,
I dream of her either loved or killed
because the town's too small.

-Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky wants to descibe this girl that he has seen or knows from a small town. He descibes her features with iamgery and meaning, like "She crops her dark hair short/so that less of her has to frown/when someone gets hurt" to describe her short hair, and the look that it gives her. He uses this to describe other features about her, such as "her stare stains your retina like a gray bulb" to describe her gray eyes.

Literary Devices:
"...her stare stains your retina like a gray bulb..." - Simile
"She folds her memories like a parachute." - Simile
"She crops her dark hair short/so that less of her has to frown/when someone gets hurt" - Personification