The poem
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flag-staff - Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes away from death - Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.
This poem mirrors a recurrent need in myself to be left alone; not to be required because of - my sex; my position as mother,wife,duaghter, sister; my citizenship;the social demands made by my friends, my job, my neighbours; and my fears for the future- to adopt a role, to repond or perform for others. The desire to be left alone and to be able to think, do and behave as I want to without any prescribed, socially assigned role is a "want" that has become increasingly central to regaining the essence of me.
The poet has an yearning to be away from this humdrum and mundane realities of life where one's 'self' is lost; entangled in various social obligations and duties, man wears a mask. The 'want' is to remain a human-a man free of these masks.His "wants"is a poem wanting to be 'himself', which has been and is still
a 'want'of every modern man.
Criticism of poetry
This is great modern poetry
spent a lot of tym searching dis poem.........