Stanza 1

The poem opens with a man and his neighbors watching bulldozers tear up the man's lawn. The man is joking with the neighbors, and the event is referred to as a "show." The man's upbeat behavior suggests that he has sold the land for a good price. "Branchy sky" indicates that this parcel of "lawn" has quite a few trees on it, as the branches seem as much a part of the sky as of the tree. Contributing to the carnival-like atmosphere is the personification of the bulldozers as sloppy males on a date, who, "drunk with gasoline," force themselves on the woman, as they test the "virtue of the soil." This last phrase is also ironic since the bulldozers are not concerned with the soil's quality, as farmers are, but with what lies beneath the soil.

Stanza 2

Stanza two begins full mobilization of the language of...