I Go Back to May 1937

“I Go Back to May 1937” begins with the speaker’s journey into the past to visualize their parents “standing at the formal gates of their colleges” (Line 1) in the “May air” (Line 9) of 1937. The speaker’s parents are poised on the brink of their marriage and their future, unaware of the challenges ahead. The speaker, privy to what has happened since their marriage, longs to stop their inevitable union. This prevention is discussed as if it could happen. Ultimately, because they “want to live” (Line 25), the speaker stops the exercise and accepts the consequences of their parents’ behavior. The speaker vows to “tell about it” (Line 30), establishing the confessional stance of the poem.

The speaker gives brisk portraits of each parent at their respective colleges. The father is confident, “strolling out” (Line 2) from underneath a “sandstone arch” (Line 3). His entrance is active and powerful. While many universities have formal arches made of sandstone, these arches evoke natural rock formations in the shape of arches that give the father’s location a primitive quality. The next image in the poem hints at the father’s latent aggression. The red tiles of the college’s roof are “glinting like bent /plates of blood behind his head” (Lines 4-5). The description of “blood” (Line 5) foreshadows the “bad things” (Line 17) that occur later in his married life. The description also suggests a bloody halo encircling the father’s head, perhaps hinting at a religious leaning in the father. Combined, the descriptions of the arch and the blood create a feeling of foreboding as the father strides towards his future.

In contrast to the in-motion father, the speaker’s mother appears passive, only “standing” (Line 7) before a “pillar” (Line 7). She holds a “few light books at her hip” (Line 6). The word “light” (Line 6) evokes several ideas at once. It could serve to show the color of the books or to discuss the books’ physical weight. As of yet, the young woman has no heavy burdens. She carries her books “at her hip” (Line 6), where she may later carry her children, suggesting that the heavier burden of motherhood will be difficult for her. In addition, this description of “light books” (Line 6) implies that the speaker’s mother is not interested in deeper learning. Just as the description of the setting in which the father appears is significant, what the speaker sees behind the mother is also significant. The college’s “wrought-iron gate”(Line 8) is “still open” (Line 8), suggesting that at this moment in the past, just before her marriage, the speaker’s mother had an opportunity to escape the difficult of the future. The “sword-tips” (Line 9) of the gate are “aglow” (Line 9), suggesting with an allusion to the Bible that the mother is banished from a Paradise she might have known. In the Bible, God places a cherub with a flaming sword at the gates of Paradise when Adam and Eve are exiled. The image of the swords combines with the images of the father and mother to enhance the speaker’s belief that the couple is doomed from the start of their married relationship.

The speaker then implies that if the union is somehow preventable, the speaker will not “do it” (Line 25) because “I want to live” (Line 25). This line marks the break from the speaker’s daydream of the past as the speaker realizes that if their parents hadn’t married, their very existence would never have been. This line also shows a break from the speaker’s previous rumination on things that cannot be controlled. To move forward, the speaker must accept that nothing can change what has already happened. The speaker resists this truth, lingering still on a photographic image of their parents and imagining they are “the male and female paper dolls” (Line 26-27) and “[banging] them together/ at the hips” (Line 27-28). At this moment, the innocuous “paper dolls” (Line 27) link and become dangerous “chips of flint” (Line 28), which are sharp bits of rock that make fire when struck together.

The mating of the speaker’s parents becomes something dangerous, but the speaker completes this action, determined to “strike sparks” (Line 29), an alternative to despair. The fiery result of the speaker’s parents’ troubled union is fodder for the speaker’s artistic formulations. “Do what you are going to do” (Line 30), the speaker directly addresses their parents, taking control of the story and accepting that the past cannot be changed. The speaker asserts that they will control the narrative of their experience and that they will “will tell about it” (Line 30).