"Island of the Three Marias" employs metaphor and symbol in its three quatrains to comment on the description in the three longer stanzas.

The "scars" in the first quatrain are suggestive of the scars of Christ on the cross; the "Easter lilies" in the second quatrain suggest Christ's resurrection; and the "story of the child martyrs" and the "stale candies said to be blessed" in the last quatrain attest to the ongoing presence and importance of belief, however conceived, and how it is passed down from one generation to the next.

Paleness is used in the first stanza and white in the second and third to symbolize naivete, innocence, purity, rebirth, and hope. All of these images together resonate with both hope and a kind of naivete and are juxtaposed with descriptions of men who are, essentially, hopeless. The most important symbol in the poem is...