Mary F. C. Pratt's "What We Carry" is a short poem about how heavy ordinary life feels, and how alone we can be while carrying it. The speaker uses one plain image: everyone has a tough bag, packed with "the weight of our times and years." It could stand for worries, memories, duties, or the strain of the age we live in.
The speaker says everyone is "half-dead these days," which is a bleak thing to say, and the "firewall" suggests that people are separated from one another. All we can do is wave and blink across the gap. Yet the poem doesn't end in despair. The image of someone with "one sleeve rolled up, scrubbing along" is stubborn and almost admiring. People keep working and keep going, however clumsily. The mood is weary and quiet, but there is also a sense of fellow feeling. The speaker sees the shared struggle, and that recognition offers a small comfort.