Summary
The speaker tells us about her current situation, saying that the "we" (she and her brother, though she hasn't yet told us this explicitly) are far away from women like the witch, and aren't even remembered by women. They're safe in their father's house, where they can sleep soundly and have enough to eat. And yet, the speaker is unable to forget the past. She asks rhetorically why she continues to think about the past. Meanwhile, her father keeps her safe by barring the door, even years after the danger has passed.
Analysis
This stanza as a whole hinges around its fourth, very noticeable line. The first three lines of the stanza, and the final two, each compose a flowing and descriptive sentence that evokes the slow and uneventful passage of time in the safety of the father's house. These lines range in length from 6-11 syllables. The fourth line, "Why do I not forget?" stands out for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a question rather than a declaration, and it consists of a single terse sentence in contrast to the multi-line, rambling sentences that characterize the rest of the stanza. It is also shorter than the other lines in the stanza. It comes in at six syllables, equivalent to the stanza's first line, but visually it appears far shorter, the surrounding lines extending well past it on the page. Glück creates this effect by significantly indenting the stanza's first line, "Now, far from women's arms." That indentation essentially extends the end of that first, short line, making the stanza's fourth line, "Why do I not forget?" appear even shorter in contrast.
Why does Glück choose to have that line stick out so dramatically? It splits the stanza's descriptions of safety and comfort in half, disrupting them with an unpleasant reminder that the speaker's physical safety hasn't saved her from emotional torment. The line, referencing Gretel's traumatic memories, cuts into the surrounding poem the same way that those memories cut into Gretel's everyday life. Thus the stanza's form, as well as its content, reflects the speaker's experiences. In fact, the following two stanzas also contain one remarkably short middle line, reinforcing that sense of intrusion and repression. In addition to Gretel's rhetorical question, we get another suggestion that she is failing to keep the past at bay. In the stanza's final line, she explains that years have passed since her experience of danger with the phrase "and it is years." The use of the present tense here reveals the extent to which the past, for Gretel, is ever-present.
The indentation on this stanza's first line has the effect of emphasizing line 4, making it look extra short. But that indentation also draws our attention to line 1 by making it slightly hidden, even mysterious: we have to wait a little bit longer for the line to actually get going. This may be because the line contains a slightly furtive or forbidden thought, wrapped up within a more acceptable one. The speaker notes that she and her brother are "far from women's arms," which is meant to be a good thing in this context. After all, the last time that she was around a woman, that woman was a witch who wanted to harm her. Before that, Hansel and Gretel dealt with a stepmother who abandoned them in the woods. But it's no coincidence that Glück uses the phrase "women's arms," an image evoking motherhood and nurturing rather than violence. In the second half of the paragraph, the speaker mentions that her father "bars the door, bars harm." This is a kind of opposing, contrasting image: it explicitly denotes safety, but the noun "bars," in contrast to "arms," is harsh and unforgiving-sounding. Thus, Glück suggests, the speaker experienced a certain safety, comfort, or intimacy even in her time of danger—maybe because she was around other women—but now, surrounded by male protectors, she feels alone and scared.
