DDCPoetry

 Poem Found Here: " A Gas Butterfly" by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky A feeling or emotion on the tip of the tongue but cannot be named in a single idea or word -- that's the feel I get from this poem.  "Tell me what's happening to me? / Why is my heart beating so fervently?"  Two thoughts came to mind when I read the first two lines.  Do the rhetorical questions lead to a concept of "love" (questioning of heart beating)?  Or do the rhetorical questions refer to something more sinister?  I was thinking a gas butterfly would be a romanticized idea of war, especially with the images in the next line of, "Why has this madness, like a wave, / Broken through the rock of habit?" However, the poem doesn't go toward definition through questioning, rather there's a stream of consciousness about trying to understand what is going on.  And trying to figure things out sometimes comes through contradiction "Is it my strength or just my to...