Summary
The speaker realizes the figure is his wife's dead brother. He then comes to feel that the ghostly figure believes he is the real intruder. The speaker tells the ghost that his wife is happy and that he should leave. The figure departs just as the speaker's wife wakes. The sun rises on a new day.
Analysis
As the poem progresses, the difficulties of the speaker and his wife come into clearer focus. As the reader learns more about the figure that is haunting them, the speaker offers a more detailed portrait of the emotional struggles that they are grappling with. In its second, half the poem provides a partial explanation of the lingering issues that were suggested in the poem's opening. At the same time, the speaker continues to try to give the same sort of love and care shown in the previous stanzas.
In the eighth stanza, the creeping dread of the scene reaches its high point. The speaker is so close to the figure, he is able to see who it actually is ("my own face had to / see it, and be seen by it, / the man it was, your"). The enjambment between stanzas specifically heightens the tension in an already anxious moment. The reader is forced to wait in suspense before finally learning who this figure is. Even more discomforting is the way the speaker is aware that the figure sees him. The speaker identifies the figure ("grey lost tired bewildered / brother, unused, untaken— / hated by love, and dead,") as his wife's deceased brother. The descriptors that applied to the figure, "lost," "tired," "bewildered," and so on, make it readily apparent that he is the source of turmoil in the household. His supernatural appearance allows Creeley to make his emotional "haunting" of the house literal. This burst of descriptions following the brother's identification supplies insight into what has been plaguing the couple. The loss of her troubled brother has caused the speaker's wife great pain. At the same time, the speaker has been trying, with mixed results, to provide emotional comfort to her.
In the next stanza ("but not dead, for an / instant, saw me, myself / the intruder, as he was not.") the figure takes on an additionally menacing edge. Not only does the brother's spectral form see the speaker, but he actually views him as the "intruder." This is both unnerving to the speaker and surprising, given the fact that this is his bedroom. However, the implication, which becomes more present in the lines that follow, is that the speaker's wife should hold onto her past pain. The speaker is viewed as an intruder because he is trying to help her move away from this experience of her grief and into the future. The speaker says something to this effect in the eleventh stanza ("I tried to say, it is / all right, she is / happy, you are no longer") in an attempt to ward off this spirit. He is trying to show this ghostly presence that his wife is happy now, in the hopes that it will leave. The speaker's endeavor is successful, as his final words ("needed. I said, / he is dead, and he / went as you shifted") get the "grey" figure to leave. Besides the emotional acknowledgment of the speaker's wife's suffering, there is also an undercurrent of mysticism. In previous stanzas, the figure is described as momentarily "not dead." At this moment, however, the speaker's comment seems to make him dead once again. The speaker's ability to make the figure disappear seems to be a comment on the solidity of its existence. Much like the feeling of grief, the figure is as real as the speaker's wife makes him. He remains as long as she suffers, holding onto the memory of him.
The poem ends on a somewhat optimistic note. In the penultimate stanza, the speaker's wife wakes up ("and woke, at first afraid, / then knew by my own knowing / what had happened—") and he is able to silently convey all that has just occurred. This unspoken connection between them demonstrates the closeness that the opening stanzas implied. This scene also seems to suggest that the speaker is finally able to reassure her, making good on his initial hope. The poem circles back to its initial motif about light ("and the light then / of the sun coming / for another morning / in the world.") as it depicts a morning sunrise. This image is an overtly hopeful one, as the speaker and his partner have just navigated the darkness of night and the intrusion of the brother's ghost. The use of the phrase "another morning in the world" carries the implication that life will continue on. The undiluted quality of this sunlight contrasts sharply with the "grey" color of the figure and the initial description of their love. This ending is an optimistic vision of the future of this couple.
The poem as a whole is a portrait of the wife's suffering from grief and the speaker's parallel struggle to offer her some solace. The brother figure coming between them makes literal their struggle with the shadow of his loss. In this later part of the poem, the speaker is able to ward off the spectral presence of his wife's brother, suggesting that, even momentarily, he has been able to provide her with some comfort and fulfill his role as a loving partner. The poem is interested in exploring the ways in which people try to help their loved ones when they fall under the cloud of loss.
