The Mystery of the Afterlife
This poem is consumed by a thematic exploration of the mysteries of what—if anything—waits for humans after death. Somehow, the speaker manages to get from kids screaming upstairs for some inexplicable reason to the apartment becoming a rocket blasting off for heaven in just a dozen lines. The reference to “our dead in Old Testament robes” allusively hints at how much energy has been expended over the course of human development to the concern of what happens after we die. The idea of death should be an all-consuming obsession considering we all know it is coming and yet somehow humans spend most of their time not directly confronting it. To reach the point of direct philosophical contemplation like that exhibited by the speaker usually requires some unusual impetus or motivation such as the arrival of “high, shrill, and metallic” screaming from upstairs at precisely “5pm on the nose.” It is an easy leap for the speaker to make, but one that most people wouldn’t make. This is a demonstration of part of the enigma surrounding what comes after. Every person has their own idiosyncratic trigger that would lead them to the same level of contemplation that the screaming provides for the speaker.
Possessorship is a Dual-Edged Sword
A less expansive theme explored in the poem is the relationship between possession and meaning. The speaker seems to have reached a conclusion that existence is mostly about possessing things. This epiphany led to viewing possession with a skeptical. Her philosophical perspective is expressed in the belief that the very things which “teaches us with blessings, / Bends us with grief.” In other words, possessorship is a dual-edged sword in that ownership can make us happy yet the loss of those very things which made us happy can make us miserable. This idea can be extrapolated to become a commentary on existence. We are given life, but only with the foreknowledge that it will be taken away. In light of that deal, the existential conflict at root in every life is how to become happy knowing this happiness won’t last unless there is an afterlife. This is why the speaker asserts that she’s eager to “To meet what refuses to let us keep anything / For long.” And unless there is something awaiting us after death which can explain this paradox, the only option is to depend upon that something being there as a matter of baseless faith.
Infinite Meaninglessness
The poem concludes with an examination of the theme of infinite meaninglessness. If there is nothing which comes after life and the only shot we get is this time spent as an absurdly fragile mortal being on earth, then the possibility of life having any significant meaning seems severely limited. The speaker compares the annoyance of listening to her “neighbor chopping onions through a wall” to the infinity of time and space as a way of demonstrating just how puny every human life is within the grand scheme of things. Infinity is an overpowering concept that if completely comprehended would likely instantly drive a person mad. So instead of thinking about it and being overwhelmed with emotional devastation, we go figuratively “mad” over the sound of kids screaming for no reason and a “stereo on shuffle” next door playing songs we don’t want to hear and all the myriad other bothersome details of life that we all know in the grand scheme don’t really matter. Were this not a species-wide instinct, millions of houses would be filled with the sounds of primal screams at the terror of infinite meaningless.
