“I Go Back to May 1937” begins with the speaker’s journey into the past to visualize their parents “standing at the formal gates of their colleges” (Line 1) in the “May air” (Line 9) of 1937. The speaker’s parents are poised on the brink of their marriage and their future, unaware of the challenges ahead. The speaker, privy to what has happened since their marriage, longs to stop their inevitable union. This prevention is discussed as if it could happen. Ultimately, because they “want to live” (Line 25), the speaker stops the exercise and accepts the consequences of their parents’ behavior. The speaker vows to “tell about it” (Line 30), establishing the confessional stance of the poem.

The speaker gives brisk portraits of each parent at their respective colleges. The father is confident, “strolling out” (Line 2) from underneath a “sandstone arch” (Line 3). His entrance is active and powerful. While many universities have formal arches made of sandstone, these arches evoke natural rock formations in the shape of arches that give the father’s location a primitive quality. The next image in the poem hints at the father’s latent aggression. The red tiles of the college’s roof are “glinting like bent /plates of blood behind his head” (Lines 4-5).