If I should die

The form of Poem 54 is deceptively simple. Each of the poem’s 18 lines is restrained, tidy, and concise. That control is itself an act of defiance against the poem itself, or least against the speaker’s uncertain relationship to her awareness of death. In a poem that tests the intellect struggling to contain and control the emotional vulnerability that comes with thinking about your own death, that meditation is cased in the tidiest of poetic forms. Indeed, the poem does not alter that form even when the poem moves from considering the wonder and order of nature to considering the chaos and confusion of our social and economic constructs.

The poem, however, subtly reveals anxiety in its lack of conventional rhyming. The tidy, often sing-song rhyme in poems is what creates reader buy-in. Clever rhymes become a distraction from whatever the subject of the poem, as the reader delights in the sonic impact of sounds working off other sounds. Here, despite the appearance of a poem, there is no escape into rhyme, no pleasant distraction. The poem thus is left only with the speaker coming to terms with mortality. There are only a few occasional stabs at rhyme (“go” and “below” [Lines 8, 10], for instance, or “fly” and “lie” [Lines 12, 14], or “serene” and “scene” [Lines 16, 18]) to reflect the mind’s unsteady and uncertain state.