D. H. Lawrence’s speaker gazes at a blazing sunset and longs to follow it past the horizon. The red glow becomes a doorway, and he imagines stepping through it into a place where he can shed his shame and pain as easily as shoes and clothes left in a porch. He pictures his own body abandoned like luggage or old lumber, no longer tied to the person who suffered in it. There is sadness in the longing, but the dominant feeling is relief: if he could only walk out of his flesh, he would turn around, see what he left behind, and laugh with pure joy. The poem creates a quiet, dreamlike mood, mixing weariness with an ecstatic wish for release.
In Trouble and Shame — Summary
I LOOK at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also
Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.
I wish that I could go
Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of some departed traveller Gone one knows not where.
Then I would turn round,
And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber, I would laugh with joy.