Marilyn Hacker: The Boy

It is the boy in me who's looking out
the window, while someone across the street
mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout
pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette?

(Because he flinched, because he didn't whirl
around, face them, because he didn't hurl
the challenge back—"Fascists?"—not "Faggots"—Swine!
he briefly wonders—if he were a girl . . .)
He writes a line. He crosses out a line.

I'll never be a man, but there's a boy
crossing out words: the rain, the linen-mender,
are all the homework he will do today.
The absence and the priviledge of gender

confound in him, soprano, clumsy, frail.
Not neuter—neutral human, and unmarked,
the younger brother in the fairy tale
except, boys shouted "Jew!" across the park

at him when he was coming home from school.
The book that he just read, about the war,
the partisans, is less a terrible
and thrilling story, more a warning, more

a code, and he must puzzle out the code.
He has short hair, a red sweatshirt. They know
something about him—that he should be proud
of? That's shameful if it shows?

That got you killed in 1942.
In his story, do the partisans
have sons? Have grandparents? Is he a Jew
more than he is a boy, who'll be a man

someday? Someone who'll never be a man
looks out the window at the rain he thought
might stop. He reads the sentence he began.
He writes down something that he crosses out.

While analyzing this poem, it comes across that this person is using his life as a metaphor that his ways inside of him indicates that he will always be a boy instead of a man. The fact that the poem is addressing gender, it looks like he is questioning his sexuality because he was maybe teased and didn’t fight back. Because he flinched and didn’t stand up for himself, he wonders if it would have been different if he were a girl. This was a very painful memory of an experience that he had in his past but he then he ‘writes a line, then crosses out a line. He feels that he will never be a man but theres a boy inside of him that is very frail.  He had just read a book about war that embarked on something similar and made him wonder if the boys could sense something about him inside that made them want to taunt and tease him and how ‘shameful if it shows’ he says. In the story he wonders about different things about the partisans like is the character more of a Jew than a boy who will someday be a man? He feels that he will never actually be a man as he looks out the window. But then he begins to write another sentence, but then crosses it out. He cannot focus.