‘…the dropping sounds, Inside this tunnel’.
In the second stanza, she suddenly goes back to before the happenings in the first stanza. She starts off saying,
‘And before….’ which is obviously telling us that she is going to talk about something that happened earlier. She goes onto to talk about the ‘coal smell’ and we learn from this that the place was somewhere involving coal, like underground, perhaps a coal mine. As she says
‘the bankrupt contractors grizzling into their beer’, the word ‘grizzling’ suggests that they have somewhat of a hatred towards the destruction of that the place they drink their beer; it becomes a waste of space. We learn this as she says,
‘..the trees and grass waiting to take over’
She finishes off that stanza by saying ‘I remember before’ which brings us back to the first line ‘And before’.
The next stanza, starts off by saying ‘And I remember the not yet after’ now she starts talking about something that has happened but not straight away from the second stanza.
‘When the money’s raised and the spare time Sunday’, here she is telling us that families are taking part in a fund raiser and going to a charity event on a Sunday.
The stanza afterwards, she talks about families who ‘purr their idle way into sunshine’. In other words, she is jealous at this point, and is thinking that why can’t she be one of those people. The poet wants to be a part of this fantasy. She discusses the ‘pink families, with their superior dogs’ enjoying the water. She is yearning to again to be part of that and is clearly envious at this point. She tries to put us in her position,
‘The weather, the picturesque antiquity’, here she is thinking about how perfect this is and is almost taking a pause, leaving us, as well, to also think about that at the end of the stanza. The last line, ‘I remember after’ is telling us that she is going to talk about, in the next stanza, something that occurred after this. Although she is does this, she states writing about ‘before’, which you are not expecting at all.
The final stanza, the author talks about the ‘Roman candle minders’ and how their life’s were taken away from them suddenly, without warning. ‘Humanity goes out, like a light’. Here she is saying that humanity can be lost, just like that, just how blow out a candle light, that is how fast life can be lost.
She constantly talks about things that have occurred before, and continuously states ‘and before’ and ‘and after’. Overall the author has tried on several occasions to put us, the reader, in her position. We assume she has tried to do this as she wants to make us to see what it feels like to be jealous and perhaps being left out can be difficult. This, as well as other things such as putting the tunnels ‘life’ on hold.
