The Body

Throughout the poem, we hear about various parts of the human body. From the heart to the eyes to the feet, there are several body parts involved here. Don't worry, though, these aren't gross, or mushy at all—instead, they're connected to the themes of the poem and… well, flesh them out (sorry). Through the different parts of the human body, we are connected with the ideas about love and existence that show up throughout the poem.

• Line 2: Our first body part in this poem is the stomach, appropriately, as the poem is titled "Central Heating" and the stomach is a very central and warm part of the body. In this poem, we start with warmth, the warmth at the middle of the body.
• Line 5: Here, we hear about feet. These are very interesting feet, to take up a whole line in the poem. They are "unencumbered" by shoes, bare, and, as our speaker thinks, quite pretty. This line starts to show us the speaker's enchantment with the body—the stomach, the eyes, the heart, and, yes, even the feet. 
• Line 6: Ah, the heart. It is perhaps one of the most tormented, famed, and symbolic body parts. A stopped heart can kill us physically, a broken heart kills us emotionally. In this poem, the heart is part of the extended metaphor, the comparison running throughout the poem which connects the human body with central heating. The heart is a system, part of a larger whole, but it has short circuited. Trouble. We imagine a spark, some smoke, and then the total collapse of the body and its emotions—kind of like when we had to drive our old Hyundai on the highway. 
• Line 9: Here, we move to another body part: the eyes. The eyes, like the heart, have a lot of symbolic baggage. They are, stereotypically, the windows to souls, objects that show our emotions without saying a word. Here, they are linked up with the speaker's love, but headed in the wrong direction. This is personification—eyes and love can't take a road trip together a la Thelma and Louise. We think of this as meaning the speaker's fallen in love with a woman, possibly because of her beauty, and that he has a bad feeling about where this love is going to take him in his life. 
• Line 15: Here, we switch to the mouth. Already, we've got some of the most sensual body parts—the eyes, the heart, the stomach (well, more sensual than the feet anyway), the mouth. The mouth is coming after an exclamation of doubt in the reality of the world. Thus, this woman's mouth is the most real part of the world for our speaker. 
• Line 16: We get another example of a body part being truly real, and also connecting back to the central metaphor of the poem. This time, it's a hand that's touching another body, warming it up wherever it touches. Body heat, then, is one of the sources of heating discussed in the poem. 
• Line 18: Now, we move to the face as a whole. At this point of the poem, the reality of the world is in question, even the face right in front of our speaker. Though he could reach out and touch this human face, which we can assume he loves, his doubts about the world overrule his love and desire, and he can't quite believe the face he's seeing is real. Poor guy. 
• Line 25: We return to the heart here as the poem's central metaphor is tied together. The sun, the source of central heating for the solar system, is linked with the heart, the symbol of emotion, the organ pumping blood to our entire body.