“After Making Love in Winter”
The winter weather is inauspicious for love-making. The speaker confesses, “At first I cannot have even a sheet on me/ anything at all is painful, a plate of/ iron laid down on my nerves, I lie there in the air as if flying rapidly without moving, and slowly I cool off-hot, warm, cool, cold, icy, till the skin all over my body is ice.” This contention endorses that the aftermath of the lovemaking session is outshone by winter chilliness. The frostiness is so prevalent that it triggers pain on the speaker’s body. The image of ice deduces that the speaker’s body is exceedingly frozen that the sensations that are assured during love making wane. The speaker’s state is credited to external dynamic (winter) that she cannot rework.
“Beyond Harm”
The departure of the speaker’s father in “Beyond Harm” is not excruciating because it transpires after the validation of adoring the speaker. Perhaps if the father had not articulated the words, “ I love you Too” before dying, the speaker would have tormented by the death. The speaker’s acknowledgement, “ A week after my father died,/suddenly I understood/ his fondness for me was safe-nothing/could touch it,” upholds that the concluding week of his father’s existence was the most imperative for it conferred him a verification of his father’s perpetual love. Therefore, even though the father departed eventually, his love for the speaker outlived him. Accordingly, the fatherly affection is “Beyond Harm.”
