Summary
The unnamed speaker reflects on the poppies that have been placed on soldiers’ graves to commemorate Armistice Day, the anniversary of the conclusion of World War I. The speaker, a mother, remembers that before her son left home she had pinned poppies on the yellow lapel of his blazer. The stanza suggests that the son was departing as a soldier, but is ambiguous.
Analysis
The first stanza makes use of juxtaposition. Lines 1-3 describe a row of graves marked by poppies in commemoration of soldiers’ deaths. Lines 3-6 move backward in time to the moment “[b]efore” the son in the poem “left.” The context would signal that the son is a soldier leaving for war and the “blazer” that the mother lines with poppies is part of his military uniform, but Weir leaves this description deliberately ambiguous. Thus, the stanza begins by discussing soldiers specifically and then moves into a possibly broader portrayal of a mother simply sending her son out of the house for any, unspecified purpose. This ambiguity gives the poem a broader, overarching tone of loss and builds the theme of family separation and grief, rather than limiting its subject matter and themes to war specifically.
This structure inverts the reader’s expectations. A chronologically linear poem or narrative would begin with the son heading off to war (likely filled with patriotism and optimism) and conclude with the devastating revelation that the son has been killed in war. By contrast, Weir begins with the disturbing imagery of graves and death caused by war before reverting to the mother initially preparing the son for his military service. This movement in time creates a sense of tension and foreboding within the poem, contrasting the isolated image of the grave with the moment of tenderness between the mother and son. The stanza weaves together the imagery of the grave and the son’s uniform, reflecting the close interrelationship between death and war.
Similarly, the use of the word “individual” emphasizes the sober fact that war results in the death of unique, specific individuals with their own identities, families, and stories. While “war” can easily be made abstract and considered as a national or global phenomenon, here Weir reminds readers that war had a very concrete and specific effect on the soldiers and their families. The soldier’s uniform is itself compared to a battlefield or war setting, again narrowing the broad theme of war to focus on its effect on specific individuals. The extended metaphor of the soldier's uniform begins with the description of the poppy on the son’s lapel as “spasms of paper red.” Both the word “spasms” and the color red can be associated with pain and damage to the body, recalling muscle spasms following an injury and red blood. This subtle connotation is reinforced by the following phrase, which describes the poppies as “disrupting a blockade,” comparing the fabric of the uniform itself to the landscape of a battlefield. The metaphor maps the concept of war directly onto the son’s body, introducing the poem’s central theme regarding the effect of war on individual soldiers and families.
