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Annotated by:
- Coulehan, Jack
- Date of entry: Oct-27-1999
- Last revised: Sep-01-2006
Summary
The speaker is a boy away at school when the news comes that his four year old brother has been killed in an accident. Arriving home, "I met my father crying . . . " The boy is "embarrassed / By old men standing up to shake my hand / And tell me they were ’sorry for my trouble.’" The next morning the boy goes upstairs to see his brother lying "in the four foot box as in his cot." [22 lines]
Primary Source
Opened Ground. Selected Poems 1966-1996
Publisher
Faber & Faber
Place Published
London
Edition
1997
Commentary
This poem captures a boy’s unfolding consciousness of death by recounting the particulars of his experience--being kept in the sick bay until his ride arrived, his father’s crying, the awkward behavior of the old men, the "poppy bruise" on the corpse’s temple. In the end he expresses death’s finality: "A four foot box, a foot for every year."