Mag
Mag - meaning Summary
Regret Over Domestic Burdens
The speaker expresses raw, repeated regret about marriage, family responsibilities, and the grind of working-class domestic life. Addressing Mag, he imagines an alternate life of poverty-free wandering and freedom from bills, children, and daily demands. The poem frames longing as both despair and bitter wishfulness, highlighting the tension between romantic impulse and the suffocating realities of economic obligation that transform love into burden.
Read Complete AnalysesI wish to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. I wish we never bought a license and a white dress For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister And told him we would love each other and take care of each other Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere. Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke. I wish the kids had never come And rent and coal and clothes to pay for And a grocery man calling for cash, Every day cash for beans and prunes. I wish to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish to God the kids had never come.
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