The speaker remembers an ordinary day when he wrote no poetry, spoke to no woman, and did not encounter death. Instead, he simply lived: noticing trees, streets, houses, and faces, breathing, eating, touching the ground. In that plain sensory absorption, he felt he could have been happy. The problem was his own mind. It kept bothering him with worries about writing another poem, about sex, and about dying—pulling him away from the present moment. The mood is quiet, rueful, and a little self-mocking. Happiness seems close, but mental restlessness keeps disrupting it.
Irradiations XXVIII — Summary
I remember, there was a day During which I did not write a line of verse: Nor did I speak a word to any woman, Nor did I meet with death.
Yet all that day I was fully occupied: My eyes saw trees, clouds, streets, houses, people; My lungs breathed air; My mouth swallowed food and drink; My hands seized things, my feet touched earth, Or spurned it at my desire.
On that day I know I would have been sufficiently happy, If I could have kept my brain from bothering at all About my next trite poem; About the tedious necessities of sex; And about the day on which I would at last meet death.