Summary

The speaker begins by expressing her "swirling wants" (1). First, she longs for the "frozen lips" of her beloved (1). Then, she worries about her ability even to express her feelings, confounded by grammar and language. She asks the beloved to witness her pain and confusion and her struggle to understand those feelings within social expectations. She describes her feelings as being like a "red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths" – something that stands out for its reality among falsified emotions (11). The speaker makes "a last attempt" to express herself (12). She shares a number of disconnected images out of which she can make no meaning, or at least which have a meaning that she "cannot say" (17). She concludes by saying that she is doing something "very common in my own way" (18).

Analysis

This poem has the same title as a poem by John Donne. On the...