Point of View

This poem is told from the first-person point of view using the pronoun “I”: “When I am so small” (Line 1). This is a necessary choice on behalf of the poet because one of the repeating words Hayes was incorporating into his form was “we.” Although it’s written in present tense (“When I am,” rather than “When I was”), the poem is clearly intended to be a retrospective piece as the speaker looks back on two separate memories ten years apart. Both cantos have a fluid, lyrical quality, yet the narration never slips out of the speaker’s personal perspective. The first is fairly concrete, with the speaker observing the world around them. The second is more internal and emotionally driven, when the speaker’s perspective becomes fractured by their experiences.

Language and Meaning

The language of the poem moves from being relatively accessible in...