Annie is dead.. No question about that.
I don't know....
It sounds to me like the image of Annie laying in the roses happened in the past. And then time passes and Annie's ribbons are faded but still alive. That's the sequence as I'm reading it. The conclusion, in my mind's eye, is that Annie was laying in rose petals, alive, and lovely in the past.
...But the odd twist is something that has struck me -is the narrator also dead?
Wow, that is a very cool idea. It adds another dimension to it.
Did he remain by her side until he was also dead? If so, what do you suppose the allegorical meaning could be of this?
Before considering the idea that the narrator is also dead, I had imagined this song thematically in a similar manner as Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice. The narrator in both songs is contemplating settling down with someone. In Bob Dylan's song, he moves on and doesn't look back. In Roses, the narrator did settle down, and ten years looks back at the broken down window ( missing glass ) and the faded ribbons and seems ___________ ( fill in the blank ). To me, the whole point of the poem is answering this question, which remains unanswered to this day. Does the narrator regret settling down? The answer is: "I don't know... must have been the roses... "
