Before
Before - meaning Summary
Anticipating Final Moments
The poem meditates on urgency and the shrinking space for choice before irreversible endings. Repeated before-clause lines list small losses and closures—gardens overgrown, pardons gone, rules fixed—to evoke mounting limitation. Tone is stark and anticipatory, imagining final acts, judgment, or personal passing and the desire to act while possibility remains. The cumulative repetitions imply inevitability, while also making present the brief window in which action or reconciliation is still possible.
Read Complete AnalysesBefore the gate has been closed, before the last question is posed, before I am transposed. Before the weeds fill the gardens, before there are no pardons, before the concrete hardens. Before all the flute-holes are covered, before things are locked in then cupboard, before the rules are discovered. Before the conclusion is planned, before God closes his hand, before we have nowhere to stand.
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