"when the body
in all its fear and cunning
makes promises to me
it knows
it cannot keep"
Pastan is recovering from surgery, which she experienced as a foretaste of death. She sees her body's weakness as a sign of impending failure. She doubts that the resilience of her youth will remain a reliable resource, and she feels deceived by the outlook of permanence which she used to enjoy.
"This is less than life, you think,
though surely more than death,
a stopping-off place
between matter and energy."
The sick woman feels like she has lost something valuable about her life, like she is somehow now less. Without the freedom of good health, she feels like a resident of a liminal space between birth and death which is other than life. She's an observer, outside the realm of the natural.
"In this kingdom
the sun never sets"
As with her other poems, "Egg" expresses Pastan's yearning for permanence. Her ideal, here described as a "kingdom," is one with eternal light. Without sunsets, there is no need to go to sleep, no need to stop, no need to change.
"We are dreaming
of transformations,
of walking
into the world
somebody else."
The customers of the salon are secretly hoping that these insignificant physical changes will change their outer lives also. They want an escape, reset. As if a haircut were a reflection of something internal, the patrons devote their attention to their private thoughts while they wait.
“They are not fooled by this odd November summer”
This line could very well refer to climate change as we experience it today. The planet just continually heats up, and we feel its effects through irregular weather patterns. Irregular weather can include hot/cold temperatures at odd times of year. Pastan uses a hot temperature at an odd time of year to show the effects; November is generally a time of year when the temperature cools down in the North (as we can guess she is if the birds are flying south). The birds in the past have always flown down south at this time of year because it has generally been cold up North, but these birds in the poem carry on this tradition although the weather is still warm.
"The death watch beetle earned its name...simply because of the sound it makes, ticking"
The specific use of the deathwatch beetle in the poem is an interesting symbol. It’s not really a frightening creature in its own right, but it is linked to a (now) superstition that it brings death. There are other insects sometimes given the name of “deathwatch” as well, but they don’t have the stigma attached to them that this particular insect does. Pastan is right about the fact that this beetle was simply named after its tick, and then was named “deathwatch”, although because this was from times of plague, where these noises alerted people to an increase of ticks. The naming of the deathwatch beetle is indeed a fascinating and confusing one, but the choice of it as a symbol in the poem is not
"Soon the buzzing plainchant of summer will be silenced for good"
A plainchant normally refers to a cappella church music sung in unison and free rhythm based on the emphasis of words. Pastan, by comparing the bee's buzzing to religious music, gives the bee a holy new significance. It makes the bee's buzz something beautiful, something to be preserved. The second part of the quote becomes more grim due to the initial comparison of the bee's buzz to a plainchant. It sounds like the boy is ending something sacred, by pushing the bee to kill itself. This quote makes the reader more compassionate to the bee by comparing its sound to religious music, and feel dread for its death in the second part of the quote.
