Point of View

The speaker in “Vigil” asks a series of questions that encourage the bereaved to come to terms with grief and embrace life again. The only pronoun in the poem is “who,” which appears in the lines, “trail / The grief of a year until it ends— / who knows where” (4-5). The lack of personal pronouns and context allow the speaker to take a backseat while considering grief from a wider perspective. This reinforces the universal nature of grief.

The questions repeatedly begin with the anaphora “why not…?” indicating an open-ended invitation. Rather than come across as an expert prescribing definitive advice, the speaker communicates an uncertainty about where one will end up by embracing life after loss. This is particularly salient when the speaker states that trailing the grief of a year will take us “who knows where” (5).

The speaker’s tone can be described as...