A Sunset of the City

The form of the poem is inconsistent. Each of the six stanzas has a different number of lines, which, without a prescribed meter, creates an uneven pacing, as if the speaker is giving each new thought a different amount of weight in her mind. Because the majority of stanzas end with a pair of rhyming lines, however, this creates rhyming couplets to punctuate the speaker’s thoughts. Stanza 2, though it contains rhyming lines (Lines 7, 9), does not end with coupled rhymes; the stanza’s “thought” therefore carries into Stanza 3, as the speaker compares her experiences as an aging woman to the change in seasons from summer to fall.

Unlike the stanzas that end with two rhyming lines, however, the poem’s final stanza is its own line with no rhyme, which suggests that the thought is incomplete. Combined with its ambiguity, the final line’s lack of a matching rhyming line suggests that the speaker either expects someone else to complete the thought or that she herself is still pondering the idea; her question remains unanswered.