Poetry Blog #3: “Ships That Pass in the Night” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

"Ships That Pass in the Night"

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
 
My tearful eyes my soul’s deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
 
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?

- Pual Laurance Dunbar

The poem “Ships That Pass in the Night” by Paul Laurence Dunbar was written with the purpose of getting white people to understand the pains of discrimination by comparing it to a pain that can universally be felt. A lover out of reach. To summarize the poem, the speaker is in a dark setting, out at sea during a dark, cloudy night. Then there is a boom of a gun, and a light in the distance catches the speaker’s attention. From this, he recognizes the ship as something he has been seeking. However, this ship he seeks is sailing past him. Because of this, he starts crying and is deeply hurt. He wishes to call out to the ship to try to stop it, as he believes there can be no other ship greater than this one, but when he tries to yell, his voice is stuck, and he is left powerless as the ship continues passing by. The speaker then expresses great sorrow and reflects on how hopeless he is as the ship continues passing. Though showing the tragedy of having a desired something out of reach, Dunbar aims to have his audience feel empathy for him and the countless people of color who have been restrained from their desired and deserved opportunities of success by those who discriminated against them. 

The title of the poem, “Ships That Pass in the Night,” is extremely important to the poem as it serves as an allusion to another poem called The Theologian’s Tale; Elizabeth from the Tales of a Wayside Inn, a poetry book by Wadsworth Longfellow In 1874. The poem The Theologian’s Tales disguises themes of faith, duty, and loss of connections. Through this poem, the phrase ships that pass in the night became a popular idiom with many meanings: forming a connection to someone only to lose it permanently, meeting the right person at the wrong time, and unrequited love. The phrase ships that pass in the night became a popularised idiom from where the poem quotes “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,/Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;/So on the ocean of life we pass and speak to one another,/Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” We can clearly see how this quote is carried out in snippets of allusions throughout his poem. 

In Dunbar’s poem, each stanza ends with the repetition of the word “passing,” to Longfellow’s use of “speak to each other in passing.” Longfellow also describes how the two ships cannot be together and only know of each other’s presence by a “signal shown,” and in Dunbar’s poem, he describes a distant “gleaming light” and “solemn booming gun” as signals for the ships presense. Then Dunbar describes how he can’t call out for the ship, but the “ghost” of his voice “doth reach that vessel” as a signal to the ship of Dunbar’s presence, alluding to how Longfellow said “a distant voice in the darkness”. Then, when Dunbar writes “out of sight and sound,” it mirrors how Longfellow said “Only a look and a voice.” 

I also want to talk about the light vs dark imagery in the first stanza. Dunbar describes the setting as a dark, cloudy night, then introduces a gleaming light as a signal for the ship. This establishes the ship as a symbol of hope that stands out in the darkness that surrounds him, which is why he seeks out this ship. Along with the visual imagery, there is also auditory imagery when Dunbar says, “I can hear a solemn booming gun,” giving the image of a serious, loud, echoing sound bleeding through the silence of the night. The gun in question is likely a ship signal gun, which is more of a mini canon than a handgun.  This kind of gun is used to signal the presence of a ship when it can’t be seen. From this, we can infer that it’s likely also a foggy night on the sea, which makes sense since Dunbar describes the night as “pregnant” as a form of personification to give us the image of it as benign, full, or swollen with emotions, and tension in the air. This also gives us a sense of anticipation that is broken by the sound of the signal gun. 

Works Cited:

“The Theologian’s Tale; Elizabeth.” Poets.Org, Academy of American Poets, 10 June 2025, poets.org/poem/theologians-tale-elizabeth.

Paul Laurence Dunbar | The Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/paul-laurence-dunbar. Accessed 27 Jan. 2026.

Analysis of “Wound From the Mouth of a Wound” by Torrin A. Greathouse.

My lover comes inside me 
and I weep inconsolably. My body, 
pressed almost through the sweat 
deanched mattress, impotent as wax
fruit before a starving man. 

Outside the window, birds pulse
into the air, their wings become broken 
scissors eching the clouds
Into confetti. Open a doorway 
to the sun’s soft light and the dark 
pit it burns in my eyes–

Thin slice of ginger root, apricot 
seed, a stomach’s perfect 
swell. Every animal sound
reminds me of a future child. 
their ungentle howl. The babble
of a baby’s brook–mouth. 

After my lover dries the sudden 
ocean from my cheeks, I search for beauty 
In the world, as if I were new. 
Gather it in fistfuls. Tongue the sun
-light. Teeth against the buttermilk moon. 

My half-sobs syncopated like a heart 
not-yet-fully beating. I palm my narrow 
hips and imagine a dream passing through 
them like wind through the eye of a needle. 
Imagine a child, against my chest, still 
borne from inside me like a wave. 

Imagine my life without this 
inconvenient truth: a record rewound 
so far, it begins with a new song. A choir 
of children, mouths curled into the shape 
of a grin, a chorus, a laugh, 
of a mother's name.

I think the poem is about Greathouse’s longing to create life and be a mother. In the beginning, she is with her lover, but instead of having a positive reaction, she feels grief and begins to cry as the moment of intimacy with her lover reminds her of how she cannot have children because, as a trans woman, she doesn’t have the anatomy to get pregnant and give birth. When describing her body, she writes, “impotent as wax fruit before a starving man,” meaning she feels her body is useless. A wax fruit is useless to hunger, as her body is useless to her desire to make a baby. In addition to that, a wax fruit may look like a real fruit, but it cannot satisfy hunger like a real fruit. Similarly, her lack of ability to conceive might be making her feel like she is not a real woman, despite looking like one, causing conflict with her identity and insecurity, which is seen widely in the trans woman community. 

In stanzas 2 the imagery she uses in the second stanza is both light and dark at the same time. She talks about birds pulsing into the air, making it seem light and energetic, but then she describes their wings as “broken scissors etching the clouds.” And when she writes “a doorway to the sun’s soft light and the dark pit it burns in my eyes–” She’s talking about the soft sunlight coming from the open doorway, but then, by looking at the light, her eyes burn, and it causes dark spots in her vision. Here she explains how dreaming of something you know isn’t possible only causes suffering and pain. She dreams of birthing a child, which she knows isn’t possible, and getting hurt from the fact that every time she remembers it.

In the third stanza, she begins to dream of being pregnant. She imagines herself eating ginger root and apricot seeds, which I’ve heard that ginger root is good for nausea during pregnancy. She also imagines herself with a pregnant belly, listening to the sounds of nature, and being excited about the prospect of having a baby. I also love the line “the babble of a baby’s brook–mouth.” I love how she compares a babbling brook to the babble of a baby; it’s really nice wordplay, and the alliteration also serves to actually create the sound of a babbling baby. 

In the fourth stanza, as her lover wipes away her tears, her mind returns to the present moment, choosing to focus on finding the beauty in the moment with her lover instead of trying to look at the light that she knows will only cause harm. However, she continues to grieve, only now she grieves with the comfort of her lover. This scene carries on into the fifth stanza, where now her sobs have calmed down as she describes her dreams of having a child passing through her narrow hips like wind through a needle. Here we see her insecurity with her body, as most cis-woman who have good anatomy for giving birth and are fertile are stereotypically described as having wide birthing hips, while here Greathouse feels shame in her body for not having such abilities to give birth and not looking as feminine as she wishes it could look. 

In the sixth stanza, she expresses how she imagines life without the inconvenient truth. The inconvenient truth being that she is a trans woman and wasnt born the way she wishes she was born. She imagines all the children she could have had and all the joy they would have brought each other. She finishes off the poem aware that she will never have a mother’s name, which could mean two things: that she will never be able to give birth to children who would call her by the name mother, and that she will never be able to call herself a mother and be a part of motherhood. 

I have heard that many trans women express similar grief about not being able to create life, which they feel is a very large part of a womanly identity, making them feel incomplete without the ability to do so. But it was very cool to see it expressed through poetry, which I felt was done very thoroughly, as I got a clear image of the emotions the author feels through the struggle of not being able to get pregnant and give birth.