Minna moves restlessly through a room at dusk, her arms rising and falling in unsteady waves. She touches the objects around her as if trying to press them into the shape of someone she has lost—someone, the speaker says, buried beneath her. The room feels fragile and sepulchral, like a tottering tomb, and her search gives it a haunted, suspended mood. Everything waits for full darkness. When night finally arrives—described almost like a breath or spray—she stops struggling against the ordinary shapes in the room and becomes, or perhaps joins, whatever she has been seeking. The poem feels intimate but ghostly: a portrait of grief or desire so strong that it tries to remake the physical world into the missing person, and only finds release when darkness blurs the line between the living woman, the room, and the dead.
Minna XV — Summary
Your arms, in faltering crescendos, Wander through the room Tinted with expectation of night. The room seems a tottering tomb Through which you roam with hands Striving to press each form into the shape Of someone buried beneath you.... Only when night sprays the room with his breath Do you change to that which you seek.