Mementos, 1

In the poem’s opening lines, the speaker describes how he has been busy sorting through piles of old mementos. These mementos range from the commonplace and ordinary, such as the piles of “old / Canceled checks” (Lines 1-2) and “old clippings” (Line 2), to items that are more personal in nature, such as his “letters” (Line 1) and “yellow note cards / That meant something once” (Lines 2-3). In alluding to how the personal items “meant something once” (Line 3), the speaker introduces one of the poem’s key thematic preoccupations: the gulf between past and present and how the power of memory can overcome that gulf, albeit momentarily (See: Themes). As he sorts through the mementos, the speaker comes across one particular item that is more arresting than the others. He describes it as “Your picture. That picture” (Line 4) and admits to the powerful—and even jarring—effect the discovery has upon him: “I stopped there cold / Like a man raking piles of dead leaves in his yard / Who has turned up a severed hand” (Lines 4-6). The imagery comparing the discovery of the photograph to that of someone discovering “a severed hand” (Line 6) while raking leaves creates a moment of tension, suggesting this photograph may be of something unpleasant or that it carries deeply unpleasant connotations for the speaker.

In the poem’s second stanza, the tone suddenly shifts as the speaker turns away from the grotesque imagery of the hand in the preceding lines to confessing, “Still, that first second, I was glad” (Line 7) in rediscovering the photograph. He then describes the photograph itself, and the reader learns it is a photograph of a young woman the speaker once knew. She is “shy, delicate, slender” (Line 8) in the image, wearing a “long gown of green lace netting and daises” (Line 9), all dressed up for “our first dance” (Line 10)—the occasion the photograph depicts. The speaker remembers how the woman’s youth and beauty deeply captivated him and the other people in attendance at the dance, admitting, “The sight of you stunned / Us all” (Lines 10-11). Despite the beauty of the image, the stanza ends on a more ambiguous note, as the speaker seems to speak dismissively and almost ruefully of what he has just recalled: “Well, our needs were different then / And our ideals came easy” (Lines 11-12). As the speaker makes this cynical statement, the tension returns to the poem.

In the poem’s third stanza, the speaker continues with a different memory. He recounts how much the photograph meant to him while fighting in World War II, referencing “those two long years / Overseas, the Japanese dead in their shacks” (Lines 13-14). While serving as a soldier, the speaker used the photograph as both a memory aid for his pre-war life and as a kind of talisman to help him maintain his sanity amid the fighting: “I carried / This glimpse of you, there, to choke down my fear” (Lines 15-16). During the war years, the photograph represented both the past and the future for the speaker, as he used it to “[p]rove it had been, [and] that it might come back” (Line 17). The speaker thus suggests the photograph had enormous emotional weight during that period, as it reminded him simultaneously of the young woman he had known and left behind while also giving him hope that he could one day resume his old life back home. The stanza ends with the speaker providing a key detail: “That [the war years] was before we got married” (Line 18). In revealing that the speaker was not married to the woman while serving as a soldier but that they did get married eventually, the speaker once again ends a stanza on a note of suspense.

In the poem’s fourth and final stanza, the speaker abruptly turns from the idealism of those early years to the disillusionment and failure of the relationship in the post-war years. He states the photograph represents a time and state of mind that embodies the period “Before we drained out one another’s life force / With lies, self-denial, unspoken regret” (Lines 19-20) and contrasts that lost time of love and innocence with “the divorce / And the treachery” (Lines 21-22) that eventually followed. The speaker then suggests that perhaps that former love and idealism were built purely on ignorance with the curt line, “Say it: before we met” (Line 22), with the phrase “before we met” implying that the speaker and the young woman only managed to love one another when they didn’t really know each other that well. However, in the poem’s closing lines the speaker reveals he is not prepared to part with the photograph or destroy it. Rather, he chooses to keep it: “Still, / I put back your picture” (Lines 22-23). The poem ends with the speaker looking ahead to the future, imagining how “[s]omeday, in due course / I will find that it’s still there” (Lines 23-24).