Lines 1-18

The first line of the poem, “The days are beautiful,” is immediately repeated as the second line—and, in fact, the line appears a total of nine times; five of those repetitions come within the first fourteen lines. This type of repetition is called anaphora and usually serves to underscore a point the narrator wants to make. In the most literal sense, “The days are beautiful” could refer to the weather in New York on September 11, 2001, which was unusually warm and sunny.

In the second stanza, the narrator's framework becomes circuitous. She states, “I know what days are,” perhaps calling the word “beautiful” to the mind of the reader, but then states, “The other is weather,” and the reader is given no clue as to what “the other” is referring. At this point, the reader is required to bring his or her own imagination into the...