Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 29-32
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
- History tells us that four young girls died in the bombing of the church in Birmingham.
- The child's shoe is all that the mother can find in the rubble. It's also a symbol of the loss of life, and of innocence.
- The poem ends with the mother's cries as she searches for her daughter, whom we can assume has died in the bombing.
- The poem stops short of confirming this for us, though. Instead, we're left with the cries of a grief-stricken mother.