Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "One of the Last Days" is a deeply intimate and quietly devastating poem that captures a moment of love, loss, and impending grief. The poem begins with a subtle dislocation of time and space: "As through a door in the air that I stepped through sideways before reaching for a plate high in the cupboard I find myself in the middle of my life." This image of stepping through an invisible threshold before performing a mundane action—reaching for a plate—establishes a dreamlike transition. It suggests that memory is not linear but rather something we enter suddenly, as if through an unseen portal. The speaker is unexpectedly transported into the realization of where she stands in her life: not at the beginning, nor yet at the end, but somewhere in the middle, with a past stretching behind her and an uncertain future ahead.

The setting is rendered with sensory precision: "May night, raining, Michael just gone to Provincetown, James making pizzas next door, lilacs in full bloom, sweet in the dark rain of Cambridge." The details feel immediate, personal, and yet universal—the specificity of place and action grounding the poem in a moment that is at once ordinary and filled with quiet significance. The mention of "Michael just gone to Provincetown" introduces absence, a subtle foreshadowing of greater departures to come. The lilacs, "sweet in the dark rain," evoke both beauty and transience, as lilacs bloom briefly and fade quickly, much like the life and love the poem commemorates.

The heart of the poem lies in the dialogue between the speaker and the unnamed "him," presumably her dying brother. "On one of the last days I told him, You know how much you love Joe? That’s how much I love you." The comparison is striking because it suggests an attempt to make the ineffable feel concrete—to frame love in a way that he can understand. But his immediate response, "No," reveals his refusal or inability to fully accept her love, whether due to disbelief, modesty, or the numbing effects of approaching death.

The conversation continues in a back-and-forth rhythm: "And I said, Yes. And he said, No. And I said, You know it’s true." This repetition creates a sense of pleading, of the speaker trying to insist upon a reality that the other person cannot, or will not, acknowledge. It is a deeply human moment, one where love is offered, resisted, and ultimately left unresolved.

Then comes the final, crushing response: "And he closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them he said, Maybe you’d better start looking for somebody else." This statement, both tender and devastating, acknowledges his own imminent departure. It is both a relinquishment and a form of care, as if he is preparing her for the world without him, urging her toward a future in which she will have to give love elsewhere. The way he closes his eyes before speaking suggests a moment of internal reckoning, of both resignation and love, as if he must gather himself before uttering the words.

The poem’s simplicity—its lack of elaborate metaphor or heightened language—makes it all the more powerful. The directness of the dialogue, the unembellished observations, and the unspoken emotions that hover between the lines create an atmosphere of profound intimacy. This is a poem about love that is at its most raw and vulnerable, about the impossibility of preparing for loss even when it is inevitable, and about the ways we try, often unsuccessfully, to make our love fully known before it is too late.

Ultimately, "One of the Last Days" captures a moment of transition—not just for the dying person but for the one who must continue living. The final line leaves the reader suspended in the weight of that moment, in the space between love and departure, where words are both everything and never enough.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...