The Expatriates

The poem’s preoccupation with loss reveals the thematic significance the transitory nature of a moment in time. The opening of the poem puts this theme on display, declaring in the first line, “it was a moment” (Line 1). Although the reader is unable to understand what “it” means, the loss of the moment feels important. Even while the moment was happening, Sexton describes it as a “moment / to clutch at for a moment” (Lines 1-2). The verb “clutch” evokes desperation, as if the moment itself contained the reason for its loss. A moment must exist briefly and then pass, and the poem communicates the transitory nature of time as a primary theme from its first stanza.

The third stanza reinforces the theme as it opens with a description of time: “For forty years this experimental / woodland grew” (Lines 12-13). The “forty years” evoke a human life lived until middle age. Regardless of specific connotations, the years the transplanted trees spent slowly growing, “their lives / filed out in exile” (Lines 15-16), mirrors the speaker’s years of alienation.

The poem’s conclusion advocates for a way to combat the loss of time. The speaker insists that the moment they experienced is now “butchered from time” (Line 31), so they “must tell of [it] quickly / before we lose the sound” (Lines 32-33).