Summary
The speaker announces that today, everyone will participate in the "naming of the parts" of a rifle. The day before they learned about how to clean the gun, and the day after, they will learn about the procedure to follow after firing the gun. Today, though, they will simply learn the names of its different parts. Japonica flowers in nearby gardens are as bright as coral, the speaker notes, before repeating that today there will be the naming of parts.
Next, the speaker begins to actually list the parts of the rifle, one at a time: first the lower swing swivel, and then the upper swing swivel. The speaker promises listeners that they will see how these parts are used when they are given slings (straps to hold the rifle). He then points out the piling swivel, telling listeners that they actually don't have a piling swivel. Once again, the speaker is momentarily distracted by nearby nature, pointing out the quiet eloquence of tree branches in the nearby gardens. He claims that, just as his listeners have no piling swivel, they also have none of the eloquent gestures of those nearby branches.
He next points out the gun's safety catch, showing how it can be released with an effortless flick of the thumb. The speaker warns that he never wants to see anyone using their finger to release the safety. Provided you have strong thumbs, the speaker reassures, this won't be hard. Distracted again, he points out nearby blossoms, which are still and delicate. These blossoms, he says, also never let anybody see them using a finger.
Analysis
From the first lines of this poem, we find ourselves dropped into the midst of a military setting. The speaker uses a commanding, instructional tone, revealing his high place on the military hierarchy relative to his addressees. On the other hand, he uses the pronoun "we," revealing that speaker and listener are all ultimately part of the same group of soldiers. In keeping with the poem's militaristic milieu, the speaker does his best to enforce uniformity and order. Over the course of the first three lines, the speaker shows that he has a clearly laid-out plan for how this group of soldiers should operate. They have discrete tasks each day, and while those tasks (especially "what to do after firing") hint at the violence of war, they are also contained by the speaker's strict, scheduled compartmentalization and businesslike tone.
While the poem doesn't follow a consistent meter, it hews close to iambic pentameter, creating a tension as it appears to hew to a meter before inevitably drifting away. In fact, the entire endeavor of "naming the parts" is a continuation of the impulse to control and compartmentalize. By naming the parts of a gun, the speaker attempts to exert control over a piece of wartime machinery and over violence itself. Rather than address the complicated and distressing reality of the gun in its totality, including its purpose and impact, the speaker splits the gun into a series of easily understood and controlled pieces.
Yet, even as the speaker insists upon the possibility of separation and compartmentalization, he himself is unable to separate the various elements of his surroundings. While attempting to focus on the task at hand—that is, the naming of the parts—he finds his attention continuously pulled towards the surrounding gardens. While he wishes to focus on an entirely man-made object, he is instead drawn towards living things in nature. In these moments of focus on nature, figurative language of various sorts enters the poem. Figurative language, which works by comparing and juxtaposing unlike elements, subtly indicates interconnectedness—if the japonica in the gardens is similar to coral, as the speaker notes, then these objects, and perhaps objects generally, are not as discrete as they may appear. When fully focusing on naming the parts of the gun, the speaker never uses figurative language. But when talking about the natural world, the speaker refers to flowers as having fingers and tree branches as having gestures. These instances of simile, metaphor, and personification suggest that the natural world derives its beauty from its interconnectedness. War and the military, meanwhile, can justify their brutality only by refusing to acknowledge that interconnectedness. In other words, the poem hints, war requires a kind of tunnel vision, so that soldiers will not fully notice the harm that they are inflicting and having inflicted upon them.
