Almost every line "Lament" features anaphora. Each stanza begins with the phrase "For the": "For the green turtle," "For the cormorant," "For the ocean's lap," and so on. This insistent repetition never lets readers forget what this poem is: a song of mourning "for" the victims of war. This anaphora makes the poem sound more dramatic, creating a relentless, inescapable rhythm that evokes war's inescapable violence.
Every line except for line 2 also begins with "for" or "the." For example, here's the second stanza:
For the cormorant in his funeral silk,
the veil of iridescence on the sand,
the shadow on the sea.
Again, this anaphora fills the poem with a powerful, driving rhythm. The list of war's victims seems to go on and on, and anaphora helps to hammer home just how many different kinds of life were damaged or destroyed and how massive war's reach can be. Anaphora further establishes a sense of connection between civilians, soldiers, land animals, sea animals, and the environment: all of these things, the poem insists, were affected by the fighting.
The use of asyndeton throughout the poem works alongside anaphora to create the sense that this list is never-ending. Without any coordinating conjunctions, it feels as though this list could continue indefinitely. These are simply a few examples of many.