Poem of the Jailer
Poem of the Jailer - meaning Summary
Freedom Born of Tenderness
The poem imagines a jailer who carries a blood-stained key and decides to free the woman he has been holding within his desire. He admits he imprisoned her tenderly and cruelly through vows, torments, and imagined futures, and now wants her freedom even if she forgets him, leaves, or loves someone else. The speaker accepts loneliness as the cost of that liberty, preserving only the memory of her body as comfort. The poem frames possessive longing transformed into an act of release, mixing guilt, tenderness, and resignation.
Read Complete AnalysesWhere are you going handsome jailer with that key that's touched with blood? I am going to free the one I love if there's still time. She whom I've imprisoned tenderly and cruelly in my most secret desire in my deepest torment in falsehoods of the future in stupidities of vows I want to free her, I want her to be free. And even to forget me and even to go off and even to come back and even to love me again or love another if another pleases her, and if I stay alone and she gone off I will only keep I will always keep in my two hollowed hands to the end of all my days the softness of her breasts moulded by love.
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