Swarthy as oilcloth and as squat
as Sancho Panza
wearing a beret’s little stalk
the pear
itself suggests the application of some rigour
the finest blade
from the knife drawer
here […]
In “A Bowl of Pears,” the narrator describes a still-life oil painting that includes a bowl of pears. He or she describes the precision that is needed to capture the realism of still life. Here, the narrator describes all that is needed to craft a painting of something as seemingly simple as a bowl of pears. He or she suggests that the quality of the painting and precision with which the artists crafts these elements depends upon the skill of the artist and the quality of artist’s tools. The narrator suggests, for example, that the artist of this oil painting must have used “the finest blade,” for the precision of the painting is remarkable.
My mother all of ninety has to be tied up
in her wheelchair, yet still she leans far out of it sideways;
she juts there brokenly,
able to cut
with the sight of her someone who is close.
In this stanza, which opens Gray’s lengthy poem, the narrator—likely Gray, himself—describes his ninety-year old mother, whose health is quickly deteriorating. He describes how his mother is so weak, how her muscles have deteriorated so rapidly, that she now needs to be tied to her wheelchair. So weak are her muscles that she now leans out of her wheelchair; she is no longer able to support herself, either mentally or physically. The narrator continues by suggesting that her emotional state is also very poor, for she is not allowed to cut her food with a knife without the supervision of another person. The subtext of this quotation, therefore, is that the narrator’s mother realizes how sorrowful her life has become and can therefore not be trusted alone with a knife, for fear that she would use it to hurt herself. She is also physically so weak, however, that she also struggles to hold it up.
Who can know how strange the land is for you, the place where you come to sleep?
You have watched the single mass of the mountains slowly worked loose,
that goes down aslant into the Underworld, and alone then in the bows have
seen the bear-paws
of the ocean idly claw at you.
In this poem, Gray explores the complex and often lonely lives of fishermen. As fishermen spend much of their life in their boats, on the sea, the narrator ponders how land must feel very strange for fishermen—how their sense of normalcy is very different from the remainder of the population. The narrator then continues by pondering how strange and humbling it would be to watch mountains of waves appear and dissipate to the “Underworld,” located deep beneath the waves. The narrator then likens these mountainous waves to the claws on bear paws, which pound their small trawling boats over and over again. In this way, this stanza serves as an homage to the resiliency and bravery of fishermen who brave mountains, violent torrents of waves night after night and have made their home in the sea.
You take your mate's hand, that is hard as a damp stone,
reached to you on the floor,
in the gutter,
in the sea.
In this stanza, the poem takes a rather ethereal turn. The narrator imagines what life after death may be like for his ailing mother, once she passes. He suggests that, once she moves onto the next life, she will be greeted by her long-lost love, her deceased husband—presumably the narrator’s father. Unlike many other poets, who often paint the afterlife as a beautiful and delicate place, this poet describes the after light as a rather morbid place, filled with dead men and women whose skin, bones, and spirits have not fully regenerated. Gray likens this after world to a gutter in the sea. The woman’s husband is described as being as hard as damp stone, rather than warm and welcoming. In this way, the narrator suggests that the afterlife will be both a comforting and frightening place for his mother, once she passes.
