Summary

The poem begins with the speaker announcing that "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" (1). She describes how, in the wake of trauma, one's body slows down and eventually sits still, including the nerves and the heart. The mind, the speaker says, might turn to religion, questioning whether the feeling is similar to that experienced by Christ at the crucifixion. But the mind is also clouded by the trauma and disoriented in time and space. One might wonder whether the crucifixion happened "Yesterday, or Centuries before" (4).

As the poem continues, the speaker delves deeper into the description of the aftermath of trauma, saying that one will go about their day without full awareness of where they are or how they got there. They will move mechanically, stunned into a new kind of existence that is actually its own form of "contentment" (9). They are not...