Who is "Reported Missing" by Anna Keown addressed to?

Question

Anna Keown's poem "Reported Missing" is addressed to a World War One soldier by a first-person narrator who is desperately hopeful that he isn't dead. Here's the poem in full: > My thought shall never be that you are dead: Who laughed so lately in this quiet place. The dear and deep-eyed humour of that face Held something ever living, in Death’s stead. Scornful I hear the flat things they have said And all their piteous platitudes of pain. I laugh! I laugh! – For you will come again – This heart would never beat if you were dead. The world’s adrowse in twilight hushfulness, There’s purple lilac in your little room, And somewhere out beyond the evening gloom Small boys are culling summer watercress. Of these familiar things I have no dread Being so very sure you are not dead. **What relation is the soldier to the narrator?** A son? A husband? A lover? Something else? Answers based either on a close reading of the poem itself or on outside information, e.g. about Keown's own life and family, would both be welcome.

Answer 1

On first read, it would seem to be about a husband. The tenderness of the language implies intimacy and sweetness, but the lines about "lilac in your small room" and small boys out "culling watercress" seem the paint the subject as younger than the narrator. With this in mind, earlier lines, in particular "who laughed so lately in this quiet place" and "this heart would never beat if you were dead" offer a more maternal tone and not that of a woman writing to a lover; this poem is that of a mother addressing a missing son.