Summary of Key Points
Structure
The poem is written in free verse. Enjambment and caesura create an irregular rhythm echoing the speaker's difficulty in articulating painful feeling. The non-chronological narrative reflects the way she remembers her son at different moments. Poem feels almost spontaneous.
Point of View
We hear the voice of a mother, talking to the son that she has lost directly. She uses concrete images rather than naming her feelings. These, open to interpretation, give the poem a cinematic quality.
Imagery
The poem opens with the image of individual war graves and poppies. This triggers memory in the speaker of pinning a poppy to her son's lapel. A mixture of vocabulary from the domestic, safe world of textiles on the one hand and conflict on the other suggests the collision of two worlds. The speaker's worldview, we infer, is tainted by what she now knows of violence and loss.
Imagery in second stanza creates a strong sense of nurturing love. Speaker can only express these feelings alone - when she releases a metaphorical songbird in her son's bedroom.
The potential of youth is evoked through a simile comparing the world outside the home with a treasure chest. This reinforces the sense of waste in the reader's mind.
A dove flying away from a pear tree could symbolize the son's death - his departure from the world, in all its abundance.
The poem concluded back at the war graves. The speaker cuts a solitary, cold, heavily burdened figure who longs to hear her boy's voice again in the wind. Image of a dove and the peace it connotes is no consolation - she wants her boy's reality.
Theme
Grief and remembrance.
