An Unborn Child

Hello everyone, Firstly, let it be noted that I am not the author of this poem, it is a man by the name of 'Derek Mahon'. I was wondering if someone could analyze it for me, as I need to develop a response for a thesis by Wednesday. Thanks for the help! I HAVE already come to the verge of Departure. A month or so and I shall be vacating this familiar room. Its fabric fits me almost like a glove While leaving latitude for a free hand. I begin to put on the manners of the world, Sensing the splitting light above My head, where in the silence I lie curled. Certain mysteries are relayed to me Through the dark network of my mother’s body While she sits sewing the white shrouds Of my apotheosis. I know the twisted Kitten that lies there sunning itself Under the bare bulb, the clouds Of goldfish mooning around upon the shelf – In me these data are already vested. I feel them in my bones – bone which embrace Nothing, for I am completely egocentric. The pandemonium of encumbrances Which will absorb me, mind and senses – Intricacies of the box and the rat-race – I imagine only. Though they linger and, Like fingers, stretch until the knuckles crack, They cannot dwarf the dimensions of my hand. I must compose myself in the nerve-centre Of this metropolis, and not fidget – Although sometimes at night, when the city Has gone to sleep, I keep in touch with it Listening to the ward red water Racing in the sewers of my mother’s body – Or the moths, soft as eyelids, or the rain Wiping its wet wings on the window-pane. And sometimes too, in the small hours of the morning When the dead filament has ceased to ring – After the goldfish are dissolved in darkness And the kitten has gathered itself up into a ball Between the groceries and the sewing, I slip the trappings of my harness To range these hollows in discreet rehearsal And, battering at the concavity of my caul, Produce in my mouth the words I WANT TO LIVE This is my first protest, and shall be my last. As I am innocent, everything I do Or say is couched in the affirmative. I want to see, hear, touch and taste These things with which I am to be encumbered. Perhaps I need not worry – give Or take a day or two, my days are numbered.