In this poem, a young mother sits in a park with her four children. Two of them argue with each other, a third plays in the dirt, and a fourth is at her breast. Her clothing is no longer fashionable, and, when a former lover passes by, the narrator imagines that he thinks to himself, "'but for the grace of God..."; the implication is that he is so glad that he is not the father of this family, the husband of this woman, that he narrowly escaped becoming such a person as she now is. He and the woman make some small talk, and she says something nice about the joy of watching them "'grow and thrive.'" However, after he departs, leaving her alone again with the four children, she says to the wind, "'They have eaten me alive.'" She seems, then, to feel as if there is no more her left. There is only the her that is a mother, and she has no time or energy to be anything else. Her own individual identity is gone, and so it seems appropriate that we do not get her name or any other distinguishing characteristics about her.
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