Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marilyn Mei Ling Chin’s "End of the Beginning" is a meditation on historical cycles, inherited struggle, and the burden of remembrance. The poem explores the continuum of suffering and endurance in immigrant and ancestral experiences, positioning the speaker within a lineage of labor, sacrifice, and existential reckoning. Through a stark and evocative structure, Chin traces a path from the monumental to the personal, from historical tragedy to private reflection.

The opening line—“The beginning is always difficult.”—establishes a broad yet intimate premise. Beginnings, whether of journeys, identities, or histories, are marked by hardship. This statement is immediately followed by a specific reference to the immigrant experience: “The immigrant worked his knuckles to the bone / only to die under the wheels of the railroad.” The juxtaposition of relentless labor with sudden, violent death highlights the brutal reality of early Chinese immigrants in America, many of whom were instrumental in building the transcontinental railroad. The phrase “knuckles to the bone” suggests extreme toil, while “only to die” strips the labor of any romanticism—there is no triumph, only erasure beneath the machinery of progress.

The poem then shifts backward in time: “One thousand years before him, his ancestor fell / building yet another annex to the Great Wall— / and was entombed within his work.” This passage establishes a parallel between historical epochs, showing how the Chinese laborer’s fate remains unchanged whether in imperial China or 19th-century America. The idea of being “entombed within his work” is literal—many legends claim that workers who perished while constructing the Great Wall were buried inside its structure—but it is also metaphorical, suggesting that lives are sacrificed to the monuments of history, that individual existence is subsumed into grand narratives of empire and expansion.

The speaker then brings the historical meditation into the present: “And I, / the beginning of an end, the end of a beginning, / sit here, drink unfermented green tea, / scrawl these paltry lines for you.” The speaker positions herself at an inflection point in history—she is both the “beginning of an end” (perhaps the fading link to an ancestral past) and “the end of a beginning” (a product of migration, a continuation of struggle). The act of drinking “unfermented green tea” contrasts with the previous images of toil and entombment. The tea, associated with Chinese tradition, remains unfermented—a metaphor for something unfinished or preserved in its raw state. This subtle detail underscores the speaker’s liminal position, caught between old and new worlds.

The phrase “scrawl these paltry lines for you” introduces a note of self-effacement. The speaker diminishes the value of her writing, perhaps in contrast to the physical labor of her forebears, or perhaps because she doubts whether words can truly honor such vast histories of suffering.

The address to “Grandfather, / on your one-hundredth birthday” signals a personal and generational bridge. This is not just an abstract reflection on history but a deeply personal reckoning with lineage. The grandfather, possibly a figure of wisdom or sacrifice, has left behind riddles—questions whose answers, the speaker implies, are now understood.

The closing lines present a series of enigmatic, folkloric explanations:

“This is why the baboon’s ass is red. Why horses lie down only in moments of disaster. Why the hyena’s back is forever scarred. Why, that one hare who was saved, splits his upper lip, in a fit of hysterical laughter.”

These lines evoke a mythic quality, suggesting that suffering leaves permanent marks—whether physical, behavioral, or psychological. The baboon’s red ass may symbolize enduring shame or exposure; the horse lying down only in disaster reinforces the notion that vulnerability is rare and often forced by circumstance. The hyena’s scarred back implies that wounds, whether inflicted by nature or history, never fully heal. The hare’s hysterical laughter is perhaps the most haunting—survival does not bring peace but a fractured, manic response to the absurdity of existence.

Taken together, these images function as a poetic code for the immigrant and ancestral experience: humiliation, struggle, lasting wounds, and a dark humor born from survival. The implication is that history does not offer closure but instead leaves marks, visible or invisible, on those who endure it.

"End of the Beginning" is a meditation on inheritance—not just of physical or cultural traits but of unresolved pain, of riddles whose answers lie in the scars of the past. Chin masterfully weaves historical tragedy with personal reflection, creating a work that is both deeply intimate and historically expansive. The poem leaves the reader with an unsettling recognition that survival, while triumphant in its own way, often comes at a cost that lingers across generations.

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