The speaker opens by declaring that the 'pure products of America' go crazy.

The speaker locates the poem's fractured subjects in isolated mountain communities of Kentucky and New Jersey.

Young men take up railroad work, driven by a lust for adventure rather than stability.

Young women spend the working week living in filth and poverty before dressing up at night.

The women dress in gaudy, trendy accessories at night hoping to attract men and security.

The women succumb to loveless encounters outside, feeling only numbed terror rather than desire.

A girl is born out of these circumstances, desolate and surrounded by disease and violence.

A state agent rescues the girl from her environment and the state takes over her upbringing.

The young woman is sent out at fifteen to work as a servant in a hard-pressed suburban household.

The speaker identifies the young servant at a doctor's home as simply 'some Elsie.'

Elsie expresses unfiltered truth about the world around her through her damaged, broken mind.

The speaker recognizes all people—including themselves—as 'degraded prisoners' beneath a corrupted sky.

The speaker's imagination strains after deer running freely through open fields of goldenrod.

The speaker declares that this longing for the natural world somehow seems to destroy them.

The poem closes with no one left to drive the car, leaving civilization entirely without direction.

The poem opens with the speaker declaring that the 'pure products of America' go crazy, immediately establishing a tone of ironic disillusionment with the country's promises. The speaker traces how isolated rural communities produce men who chase railroad work and women who cycle through poverty and loveless encounters, eventually giving rise to children born into deprivation. One such child is rescued by a state agent, raised in foster care, and placed into service at fifteen in the suburban home of a doctor—where the speaker recognizes her simply as 'some Elsie.' Through Elsie's damaged but truth-telling mind, the speaker arrives at a recognition of shared imprisonment, declaring all people 'degraded prisoners' beneath a corrupted sky. The poem ends without resolution—no one to drive the car—leaving civilization without guidance.

The poem's core narrative: from broken communities to Elsie to civilizational drift.

The poem's opening words mimic the cheerful language of consumer advertising before turning ironic.

The speaker describes the isolated lakes and valleys of northern New Jersey as a second site of the poem's fractured world.

The communities are populated by deaf-mutes, thieves, and bearers of old, decayed family names.

The men are described as 'devil-may-care,' prioritizing sensation and adventure over responsibility.

The women's cheap accessories come from imaginations that lack any peasant tradition or cultural heritage.

The women flutter and flaunt in sheer, inadequate rags, their poverty visible beneath the performance.

The women's encounters with men occur outside, beneath hedges of choke-cherry and viburnum.

The girl born from these circumstances grows up hemmed round with disease and murder.

The girl is raised by the state before being placed into domestic service.

Elsie's physical body—her ungainly hips and flopping breasts—is described in frank, unsentimental terms.

Elsie directs her desire and attention toward rich young men with fine eyes.

The speaker describes a world where people are destined to hunger until they are forced to eat filth.

The stifling heat of September accompanies the speaker's vision of deer moving through open fields.

Truth appears only in isolated flecks—something briefly given off but impossible to preserve.

The speaker acknowledges there is no one left to witness and adjust what they have seen.

This pool traces the social and material details surrounding the poem's main narrative, moving from the communities and people the speaker observes to the specific images and objects that expose their world. The speaker populates the poem's landscape with a cast of marginal figures—thieves, deaf-mutes, devil-may-care men—and women who adorn themselves in cheap accessories that carry no real cultural meaning. A girl grows up hemmed in by disease and murder, is raised by the state, and eventually takes shape as Elsie—described in frank, unsentimental physical detail. The poem's later images of stifling September heat and golden fields offer a vision of nature just out of reach, while truth appears only in isolated flecks that dissolve before anyone can hold them. The pool ends with the speaker's resigned acknowledgment that there is no one left to witness or make sense of what remains.

The social landscape, marginal figures, and material details surrounding the poem's arc.

The opening advertising language is revealed as an ironic indictment of a system that treats human beings as commodities.

Promiscuity between the railroad men and local women is presented as a self-perpetuating cycle rooted in displacement.

The women's nighttime transformation into fashionable dress is exposed as a hollow performance driven by manufactured ideals.

The women's terror goes completely unexpressed, silenced by both social pressure and a broken connection to the natural world.

The verb 'railroading' is revealed to carry a double meaning—physical labor and the reckless rush of unconsidered living.

Hedges of choke-cherry and viburnum become symbols of a natural world the women are present to but cannot access or name.

The speaker considers how a mixed-race marriage might produce a child capable of seeing and expressing truth.

The girl's rescue by an agent is revealed as a shift from one exploitative system directly into another.

The speaker discloses a personal connection to Elsie by identifying 'some doctor's family' as their own household.

Elsie is described as 'voluptuous water'—an elemental, uncontainable force that flows toward truth without filter.

Elsie's cheap jewelry is revealed as a futile attempt to bridge the gap between her class and the wealthy world she serves.

The earth under humanity's feet is compared to the excrement of some sky, marking the speaker's full disillusionment.

The speaker's shift to first-person plural marks the moment of recognizing that privilege offers no protection from the same eroded world.

The fleeting appearance of truth in isolated flecks is revealed as evidence of civilization's fragmented, deteriorating state.

The poem ends without a closing period, leaving the speaker's thought—and society's crisis—unresolved and still in motion.

This pool follows the poem's chain of realizations, tracing the moments where observation sharpens into understanding. The opening marketing language is unmasked as an indictment of a system that treats people as commodities, and the promiscuity among the poem's characters is revealed as a symptom of deeper rootlessness rather than personal failing. The women's terror goes unexpressed, trapped between a society that ignores them and a natural world they can no longer name. When Elsie arrives, she is not simply a servant but a revelatory figure—described as 'voluptuous water,' her broken mind paradoxically the clearest lens on the truth around her. The speaker's discovery that they share the same prison as Elsie marks the poem's emotional turning point, and the earth itself becomes excrement beneath a degraded sky. The poem closes not with a period but with an unresolved sentence, leaving the reader suspended in the same drift the speaker cannot escape.

The poem's key revelations: consumerism, exploitation, Elsie's truth, and the speaker's reckoning.