The Wake

• About his grandfather, a chest consultant who served in the Royal Navy.
• Title associated with funerals and a celebration of life but also the disturbance of a boat passing through water - relevant to the life of the grandfather.
• "he looks me straight in the eye, ninety years old, folded into his favourite chair" 


  Intimate connection. "straight in the eye" direct bravery, physically frail yet knows his own mind.
• "he doesn't want this [...] to have the doctor plumb any further into the depths of his scarred lungs"


  Echoes On Going - doesn't want medical intervention. Semantics of depth compares his lungs to the sea.
• "those two pale oceans/rising and falling in the ribcages' hull"


  Motif of nautical imagery - unnatural and sickly lungs.
• "we both know there has already been a passing"


  Premature acceptance of his death
• "a great ship"


  Homage to his grandfather and the impact he had.
• Use of caesura in the final tercet, breaking up the lines. Represents the complexities of life and death.
• "like the first sea there ever was/or that ever will be"


  Connection between generations. An optimistic celebration of life.