Summary
The mother walks to the top of the hill, where she finds a war memorial with inscriptions on it. She leans against the memorial and watches the dove flying above. The mother listens to the wind, wishing that she could hear the voice of her son calling in the playground.
Analysis
The fourth stanza creates symmetry with the first stanza by returning to the graveyard mentioned in the opening lines. This stanza reinforces the poem’s specific commentary on war by introducing the war memorial; along with the war graves in the first stanza, this is one of only a few direct, specific references to war in the poem. Thus, the final reference provides further support for the interpretation that the son is departing for war (or even that the son himself has passed away and his name is included in the memorial). By tracing the inscriptions, the mother may be specifically mourning these past soldiers and preemptively mourning her son, who is at risk. The war memorial and inscriptions also expand the scale of the poem; like the individual war graves mentioned in the first stanza, they remind the reader of the scope of war’s devastation and the many unique individuals who are affected, and even lose their lives, due to war.
The fourth stanza also expands upon the threading imagery introduced in the third stanza, when the speaker described the “pleats” that they felt their stomach was making as they walked. Here, the dove is described as an “ornamental stitch” that pulls against the fabric of the sky, connecting the dove to the earlier description of the soldier’s lapel and thus strengthening the symbolic connection between birds and the son. This connection is further enforced by the mother describing the dove as moving “freely,” linking the dove to the son’s experience of freedom as he accesses the “treasure chest” of the outside world. However, this symbol of the dove is ambiguous—doves are traditionally a symbol of peace, but the mourning dove is also a symbol of mourning. Whether the mother sees hope in the dove or sees her anxieties reflected in the dove is thus left deliberately unclear. The references to fabric, such as the description of the dove as a stitch, also reflect Weir’s own occupation as a textile designer, as she draws on her personal experience to convey the more universal concept of a parent missing their child.
The tone in this concluding stanza is one of longing and hope. The speaker describes the memorial as a “wishbone” and states that they were “hoping to hear” their son’s voice. However, the preceding stanzas and the graveyard setting imbue this hopeful language with an ominous tone. In the concluding line, the mother hopes to hear the son’s “playground voice,” which the reader understands from context is an impossible wish, as the mother has already reflected on a past time when her son was young, implying that her son is now older. The mother’s longing for a sound that the reader knows she will not hear creates a melancholy note at the poem’s conclusion, solidifying the poem’s focus on the anxieties and fears surrounding war from a parent’s perspective.
