5. What is the meaning of the line “Both wry with the laboured ease of loss.”
6. What does “this circumstance” refer to?
7. The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are they?
Answers
Ans 5: the above lines means that the poet’s mother felt pain whenever she saw the old photograph because the innocent childhood days would never be back. Those are just the memories. While the poet has lost his mother twelve years ago and she misses her a lot and recalls her laughing and pointing out the outfits they used to wear at the beach holidays. Both of them lost something.
Ans 6: The words ‘this circumstance’ refers to the present situation of the poet which is the painful memories of her mother who have been deceased twelve years ago. While looking at the old photograph of her mother’s childhood makes her miss her more. She remembers her laughing and how the photograph was her favourite past memory.
Ans 7: the first stanza depicts her mother’s childhood days when she was twelve years old or so. It talks about a photograph of her with her two cousins on a beach holiday. Her uncle took the photograph. Her mother changed over the years as she grew older. While the sea which touched their feet in that beach holiday hadn’t changed over the years.
In the second stanza, the poet talks about her childhood days when her mother used to look at the photograph and recalls everything mentioned in the first stanza.
In the last stanza, the poet shares that her mother is dead as many years ago as was her age in the photograph. She died twelve years ago. The poet is recalling her mother’s old memories while looking at the photograph. She is in pain and misses her deceased mother. She has no words to describe her grief.
Answer:
the poem tells us about the old memories of narrator's mother.