Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Pain" is a stark and tender meditation on suffering, endurance, and the inevitability of death. In a tone that is both intimate and restrained, the poem traces a loved one’s experience of physical agony, particularly in the context of a prolonged illness. Through the metaphor of a wave, Howe evokes the relentlessness of pain, its capacity to rise and expand, accumulating pressure that refuses to break. The poem’s understated language and structure mirror the slow, inescapable progression of terminal illness, culminating in a final, devastating realization.

The poem begins with a striking image: "He rose on the surface of it like the layer of water on top of a wave that won’t break." This simile suggests both buoyancy and helplessness—the person is afloat on pain but has no control over its movement. The description of the "cold and moving" swell reinforces the impersonality of suffering; pain is not an isolated event but an elemental force, vast and indifferent. The line "like something breathing you can’t see" introduces a haunting presence, implying that pain has a life of its own, shaping and dominating the experience of the afflicted.

As the wave "collects and collects," the metaphor becomes more urgent: "until it seems uncontainable, heaving on and on, rising and rising and growing bigger." The repetition of "rising" and the relentless motion of "heaving" mimic the way pain accumulates, how it builds without resolution, without release. There is a growing tension here—one expects the wave to break, but it does not. Instead, the sufferer remains suspended in a liminal space between endurance and collapse.

Against this backdrop of relentless pain, the second half of the poem introduces an act of human resistance: storytelling. "When it got very bad, he’d say, Tell me a story, and after an hour or so, he’d say, We got through that one, didn’t we?" Here, Howe captures the small, desperate ways people try to manage suffering. The request for a story suggests both an escape from pain and a way to measure time—narratives become temporary lifeboats, ways to survive each unbearable stretch of experience. The use of "we" underscores the shared nature of this suffering; the speaker and the dying man are in this together, crossing each threshold of pain one story at a time.

But then comes the turning point, the moment when endurance meets inevitability: "Until a day came when he said, Marie, you know how we’ve been waiting for the big pain to come? I think it’s here. I think this is it. I think it’s been here all along." This realization is devastating. The "big pain"—once anticipated as a future event—is revealed to have been constant, woven through every moment. The repetition of "I think" suggests not just an acceptance but also a kind of incredulity; the speaker?s brother, so accustomed to waiting for pain’s peak, now recognizes that he has been living in it all along.

The final lines are stark and unembellished: "And he did take the morphine, and he died the next week." The simplicity of this statement reinforces the inevitability of death. There is no grand climax, no final battle—only the quiet surrender to relief. The use of "did take" rather than simply "took" emphasizes the weight of the decision, the deliberate crossing into a space beyond suffering. The closing phrase—"and he died the next week"—is profoundly restrained, almost abrupt, mirroring the way death arrives: suddenly final, even when expected.

Howe’s "Pain" is a deeply compassionate exploration of suffering, memory, and acceptance. The poem does not seek to dramatize or sentimentalize death but instead offers a raw, unflinching portrait of what it means to endure. The wave that never breaks serves as a fitting metaphor—not only for the persistence of pain but also for the way loss lingers, how it rises and expands in memory, how it remains even after the person is gone.

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