Messenger

This poem is written in first person and the voice of the poet can be assumed to be akin to that of the poem’s speaker. The poem begins with the speaker saying, “[m]y work is loving the world” (Line 1). The reader gets a glimpse into the internal dialogue of the speaker of the poem as she asks, “Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young […] Let me / keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work” (Lines 6-9). The speaker utilizes the first-person pronouns “my” and “I,” indicating that she is solely speaking from her own perspective. The reader is not required to take a stance, but instead to simply be present to receive the speaker’s considerations.

In the last two lines of the poem, the speaker states she is “telling them all, over and over, how it is / that we live forever” (Lines 19-20). For the first time, the speaker addresses the nature around her as “them” and finally moves from speaking in the singular to the plural first-person pronoun “we” (Line 20). This shift helps bolster the blissful nature of the poem’s conclusion.