Summary
At the beginning of this final stanza, we’re introduced to the final loss described by the poem. This time it’s a person —a “you” whom the speaker addresses. The speaker tells this “you” that losing them has been manageable and not at all disastrous. Indeed, the speaker says, their statements about how easy it is to lose aren’t lies, and not even the loss of this beloved person can change that. The speaker describes in a parenthetical a few of the things they miss about this person: their voice and their gestures. The poem ends with a repetition of both familiar refrains—first the declaration that losing isn’t hard to master, and then the reassurance that loss is not a disaster. However, a second, strange parenthetical disrupts the poem’s final line. In this parenthetical, the speaker commands “Write it!,” as if urging themself to finish the line.
Analysis
Up until now, we’ve been steadily building up to bigger and bigger losses. At the end of the fifth stanza, when the speaker has lost an entire continent, readers are left wondering what could possibly come next. The poem’s escalation thus far leads the reader to think this last stanza might describe an even bigger loss, or a long, breathless list of objects. But it’s nothing like that. There’s only one loss described in this stanza, and it’s conveyed in one, tiny syllable: “you.” The poem seems to come to a sudden stop and home in on something small and specific. Even the sound of the word “you,” with its coo-like long vowel, gives an impression of lonesomeness, tenderness, and wistfulness. There’s something quite sobering and sad in this sudden shift, and the loss described feels much more vivid and poignant.
This stanza also stands out for its use of punctuation. Until now, the poem has kept its punctuation simple: mostly periods and commas, with occasional semicolons, colons, or exclamation marks scattered sparingly throughout. This stanza boasts those usual commas and periods, but it has a lot more than that. The stanza gets started with an em-dash (a kind of long hyphen that words a lot like a colon or parenthesis). Then it contains not one but two parentheticals, and, within one of those parentheticals, an exclamation point. One effect of all this punctuation is simply to slow things down. Broadly speaking, punctuation adds different types of pauses or delays to text. Therefore, all this punctuation contributes to this stanza’s focus on the slow, the small, and the specific.
Yet it’s also worth delving into that em-dash, the two parentheses, and the exclamation point one at a time. The fact that the line begins with an em-dash is unusual. It’s a bit like the speaker is taking a pause before they’ve even started talking. Therefore, after five stanzas of acceleration and density, the em-dash alerts us that things are about to become more meditative. At the same time, it feels a bit like the speaker is stalling or is unsure of what to say. The almost-brash confidence they displayed in the poem’s very first line feels destabilized. Then there’s the first set of parentheses, which contain descriptions of some of the things the speaker misses about their lost loved one. The parentheses here feel like a whispered aside. Even while the speaker claims that they’re able to cope with losing this beloved “you,” they can’t resist squeezing in a short remembrance of their loved one. However, that remembrance is enclosed within parentheses, as if the speaker is hoping it will go unnoticed. Finally, there’s the final parenthetical, which contains the phrase “Write it!” It’s this tiny phrase that lets us know, once and for all, how deeply the speaker is denying their own feelings. Throughout the poem, the speaker insists that losing is easy, whether the thing being lost is big or small. Here, they seem to be pushing themselves with great difficulty to simply finish the poem. This line alerts us that the speaker doesn’t really believe what they’ve been saying at all—instead, they’re straining to simply get the words out.
