Summary
In the first stanza, a woman is described by a third-person narrator. The woman is sitting in a park, wearing old, unfashionable clothing. “Two children,” presumably her own, fight with each other and tug on her skirt. Her third child draws in the dirt nearby. Then, a person that the woman once loved walks by her.
Analysis
The sonnet begins with two sentences, end-stopped after the first line: “She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.” Here, Harwood employs a caesura, a modern poetic device that consists of a grammatical pause in the middle of a line. The abrupt break between the two sentences marks a shift from a neutral statement (“She sits in the park”) to a clear foreshadowing of the woman’s dissatisfaction with her current life (“Her clothes are out of date.”). In addition to this use of caesura, the line also employs the literary device of parataxis—the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words, to indicate coordination. "She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date" is an example of parataxis because there are no conjunctions or other grammatical devices to create a flow between the two sentences; they are simply placed side by side. This use of parataxis creates a staccato rhythm that immediately disrupts the poetic flow of the sonnet. The short, punctuated sentences establish an abrupt tone, as if the woman herself is reluctant to disclose information about herself to the reader. As such, the poem structurally reflects the woman’s frustration and annoyance by using staccato rhythm and spare details.
The first stanza also thematically captures the woman’s sense of dissociation and separation from her own life. The poem's speaker is a third-person voice observing the unnamed woman and selecting specific details to highlight her dissatisfaction. Building on the sense of detachment created by this third-person perspective, the speaker impersonally describes the woman's children as “[t]wo children,” creating a sense of distance and detachment between her and her children. Her third child is also described only as “a third,” and his actions are stated with a sense of anthropological detachment—the mother watches him drawing in the dirt and does not comment or reflect on his actions, compounding the sense of emotional distance. This is further emphasized by the use of the adjective “aimless” to describe the child’s drawings. The aimless drawings symbolize the woman’s own aimlessness, her sense of a lack of direction and agency in her life. Finally, this sense of hopelessness and inaction is further emphasized by the enjambment used in the last line. The woman’s former lover passes by “too late...” We are not told until the second stanza that it is “too late / to feign indifference.” By ending the stanza in this ambiguous way, Harwood emphasizes the broader sense of regret that is invoked by the words “too late.” While it is literally too late to ignore her lover, it is symbolically too late for the woman to return to her life before motherhood.
