Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem opens with the stark fact of the mother's death, setting the scene in a season marked by an abundance of rain, which has led to the decay of crops and the saturation of ordinary life—tablecloths, deck chairs, and lilacs. The journey to pay final respects to her mother is laden with these images, suggesting that the natural world is in sync with the speaker's internal state of mourning.

Boland reflects on the human body's composition, mostly water, and connects this to the watery landscape of the city. This reflection extends beyond the physical to suggest a spiritual and elemental kinship between the body and the world it inhabits. The confluence of ocean, river, and cloud in the cityscape mirrors the confluence of emotions and memories in the speaker's mind as she confronts the reality of her mother's death.

The poet's observation that the elements "begin / a journey towards each other that will never, / given our weather, / fail—" serves as a metaphor for the inevitable and continuous cycle of life and death. The intermingling of water in its various forms—sea, river, fog, mist—parallels the human experience of loss and the continuum of existence. Boland notes how this interplay of elements finds its way into the language and expressions of the city's inhabitants, further embedding the natural cycle into the fabric of human life.

As the speaker arrives at her mother's house, the boundaries between the forms of water begin to blur, much like the boundaries between life and death. The "fog into mist, / mist into sea spray" becomes an "oily glaze" on the railings of the house, a physical manifestation of the transmutation of states that parallels the transformation of the mother's soul from the physical to the ethereal.

The closing lines of the poem are especially poignant, as the speaker enters the house where her mother is dying. The elements are once again on the move, and there is a sense of continuity and change that the speaker feels in her grief. The water that has been a constant motif throughout the poem now seems to be a part of the mother's dying process, just as it has been a part of her life.

"And Soul" is a powerful and lyrical contemplation of mortality, loss, and the interconnectedness of human life with the natural world. Through the motif of water, Boland captures the fluidity of existence, the cycles of nature, and the profound impact of personal loss. The poem is a testament to the enduring presence of those we love in the world around us and in the language we use to give voice to our deepest emotions.

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