Chapter a-photograph: A Photograph | Short Questions

This phrase is a powerful use of alliteration and metaphor. 'Transient' means something that is temporary or short-lived. By describing the girls' feet as transient, the poet is commenting on the brevity of human life. While the sea remains almost unchanged over the decades, human beings grow, age, and eventually die. The 'feet' that walked on the sand are now gone, but the sea continues to wash the shore. This contrast highlights the vulnerability of humans in the face of the permanent and unchanging forces of nature.

The 'circumstance' refers to the death of the poet's mother, which occurred about twelve years ago. It is a situation of profound grief and loss where the poet finds herself alone, left only with the silence of her mother's absence. The poet uses this word to describe the reality of living without her mother. It is a 'circumstance' that is so final and absolute that there are no words left to describe it, leading to the heavy silence that concludes the poem.

The poet describes her mother's face as 'sweet' and notes that the photo was taken 'before I was born.' This description highlights the mother's youthful beauty and innocence. By mentioning that it was before her own birth, the poet creates a sense of looking back into a world that existed before her time. This sweet, youthful face in the photograph stands in sharp contrast to the mother's later years and her eventual death, emphasizing how much has been lost to the passage of time.

The sea is the one thing that has not changed significantly over the years. This suggests the permanence and immortality of nature compared to the fleeting nature of human life. While the girls in the photograph have grown up and the mother has died, the sea continues to exist just as it did then. This comparison serves to make the reader realize that human life is just a small, temporary part of a much larger, enduring world, which adds a layer of melancholy to the poem’s theme of loss.

This line highlights the layers of memory and loss across generations. For the mother, the sea holiday was a happy event from her childhood that she could only look back on. For the poet, the sound of her mother's laughter—which she used to hear when they looked at the photo together—is now a part of her own past because her mother is no longer alive. It shows how joy is replaced by memory, and memory eventually becomes a source of sorrow as the people we love are taken away by time.