So here we have the first proper poem in the chronology of the collection. Similarly to ‘Last Act’, we begin with an aftermath. In this case it is the aftermath of the First World War, a subject that has been the subject of many of the world’s finest poets of the past hundred years. Sheers is presenting this as the turning point where he has become the man of the family and his father is the weaker one – although ‘Inheritance’ gives us the depiction of the father as quite a weak figure from the start. Once upon a time, around the 17th Century, there was a type of poem being written which has since been labeled as ‘metaphysical poetry’. The most famous poets in the group were John Donne and Andrew Marvell, and they liked to write witty, inventive extended metaphors and similes.

If you didn’t know, feminine rhyme is like a normal rhyme but with the stress on the penultimate syllable of each line. It can be no coincidence that Sheers, who rarely rhymes, has chosen to use feminine rhyme when dealing with a woman’s battle with breast cancer.Waiting Staff: These are the least skilled of the workers in this poem, and so could be taken to represent the least skilled workers in society as a whole. Waiters are simply concerned with transporting goods from one place to another, and so could be taken to represent anyone whose trade involves transport.

Cage = Something which seems attractive at first, yet turns out to be empty and restrictive – a clear metaphor for lust and emotionally shallow relationships. The cage becomes a situation which keeps the lovers from being entirely together, yet they are able to interact. Perhaps they have agreed to be friends. The idea that Hunzvi’s smile is ‘a CD selected’ also suggests that there are more CD’s from which he has to choose. By extension, every emotion or gesture made by Hunzvi has been a conscious choice, a role play perhaps, and that he is not capably of having a genuine emotional engagement with anything. Of course, the flipside of this is that, even though he may always be in control of his emotions, he is incapable of innocent happiness. It is of some significance that this is occurring in August, yet the previous poem was Winter… a subtle device for showing the passage of time. Also perhaps the suggestion that in the colder months we are motivated by romance, whereas the warmer times of the year are more carnal and lust-fuelled if we are to take on board the image of a ‘mating season’. The crudeness of the ‘red wings’ image also shows us that much of the poem is being told through the anecdotal wording of the Jones character himself. We imagine that the image of the ‘umbrella blown inside out’ is Sheers’ poetic interjection, rather than a quote from Jones – the contrast between the two types of description shows us how different Sheers feels from this small-town man. Notice too how telephone wires are a recurring image in this collection. A sign of the shrinking world and the onset of global communication, causing a homogenous society where everyone is the same.

This poem stands out against the rest of the collection in terms of imagery. He uses the extended metaphor of keys and key-cutting to describe the nature of their relationship, which has the obvious sexual connotations but also the idea of things fitting together and being made for each other.