Dominion Over the Beasts of the Earth 

Context:

“Dominion Over the Beasts of the Earth” by Tracy K. Smith is a fragmented, associative memory poem addressed to a boy from the speaker’s adolescence, Mauricio. The title, drawn from the biblical grant of human authority over animals in Genesis, is used ironically: the poem is not about mastering the natural world but about a desire the adult speaker still cannot govern or explain. Animal imagery runs through the poem as a figure for instinct and wildness, set against the domesticated shape of the speaker’s adult life. Smith explores themes of memory, guilt and silence, desire that resists control, and the gap between the adolescent and adult self.

Line-by-Line Analysis:

Memory and the Animal Self:

Analysis: The poem opens in the body, not in argument: breath, weightlessness, motion. The speaker recalls a childhood memory of running wild with other children, and reaches for an animal comparison to capture the freedom of it. This is the poem’s real engagement with its title – not humans mastering beasts, but the speaker’s own half-tamed, instinctive self.

• Quote 1: “giddy As kid goats that have learned To dance on two hooves”
  • Explanation: The simile compares the children to kid goats, standing upright and unsteady. It is a figure for instinct only just becoming shaped into something recognisably human – the beasts of the title are not out in nature but inside the speaker.
• Quote 2: “Boy on the cusp, on a bicycle On the porch my father put up”
  • Explanation: "On the cusp" places the memory at a threshold – between childhood and adolescence, between the family home (the father’s porch) and a desire the speaker is about to discover.

Addressing Mauricio:

Analysis: The poem is structured as a fragmented address to a boy named Mauricio, returning to him across short, disconnected stanzas as if the memory keeps resurfacing rather than being told in order. The direct address ("Tell me, Mauricio") makes the poem feel like an unfinished conversation the speaker is still having, years later.

• Quote 1: “Tell me, Mauricio, at that age What does a boy carry with him?”
  • Explanation: The question is really addressed to the speaker’s own adolescent self as much as to Mauricio – an attempt to understand what was carried, unspoken, at that age.
• Quote 2: “Mauricio at 13 with skin Like sunset over the Pacific”
  • Explanation: The simile is tender and vivid, fixing Mauricio permanently at thirteen in the speaker’s memory – the image itself has never aged, even though the speaker has.

Guilt and the Burned Letters:

Analysis: The poem’s central act of concealment is the burning of letters – evidence of the relationship destroyed rather than kept. The image of moths swarming the speaker’s eyes turns an ordinary insect into something closer to grief or shame made visible.

• Quote 1: “When I burned our letters, Ordinary moths swarmed my eyes”
  • Explanation: Burning the letters is an act of erasure, but the moths – drawn to the flame – will not let the speaker look away from what is being destroyed. The word ordinary makes the moment feel involuntary rather than symbolic to the speaker at the time, though it reads as symbolic now.
• Quote 2: “but even now Tries to climb back Along the frayed thread of dreams”
  • Explanation: The memory is not settled; it "tries to climb back" into the present, and the "frayed thread" suggests how fragile and incomplete the speaker’s access to it now is.

The Ring That Doesn’t Fit:

Analysis: The poem sets the wildness of the memory against the speaker’s present, domesticated adult life, figured through a wedding ring that is "two sizes too loose" – a detail that quietly suggests the marriage sits on the speaker rather than fitting.

• Quote: “I couldn’t laugh Until I made sure the ring That married me to the right person (Two sizes too loose) Was still on my finger”
  • Explanation: "The right person" is loaded – it names social correctness rather than certainty. Checking the ring is a nervous, compulsive gesture, and its looseness undercuts the reassurance it is meant to provide.

Every Lost Love Called Mauricio:

Analysis: Near its close, the poem widens out from one boy to everyone the speaker has ever dismissed or let go. Mauricio becomes a name for a whole category of feeling the speaker never let themselves keep.

• Quote: “I want to speak now To the ones I’ve said Meant nothing, And I want to call them all Mauricio”
  • Explanation: This is the poem’s emotional turn: the confession that "meant nothing" was a lie told at the time. Renaming every dismissed connection Mauricio collapses years of denial into a single act of naming, and of regret.

The Closing Image:

Analysis: The poem ends not on reflection but on a single unresolved image of Mauricio’s body, left hanging without a full stop – the memory breaks off mid-sentence rather than concluding.

• Quote: “Enormous Mauricio With the drunken legs And hands as large And white as magnolias—”
  • Explanation: The dash at the end refuses closure. The simile "white as magnolias" returns to the poem’s pattern of tender, sensory physical description, leaving the poem suspended in memory rather than resolved by understanding.

Key Themes:

• Desire That Resists Control:
  • The title’s claim to dominion is ironic: the speaker has no real authority over this memory or the feeling attached to it, decades on.
  • Quote: “giddy As kid goats that have learned To dance on two hooves”
    • Explanation: The animal simile figures instinct as something the speaker is only just learning to stand upright with – not yet, and perhaps never, fully mastered.
• Guilt and Concealment:
  • The poem is built around things hidden or destroyed – burned letters, a lie about what "meant nothing."
  • Quote: “When I burned our letters, Ordinary moths swarmed my eyes”
    • Explanation: Destroying the evidence does not bring relief; the moths keep the moment of loss visible and present.
• The Adult Self Versus the Adolescent Self:
  • The poem measures the domesticated present (marriage, the ring) against the ungoverned feeling of adolescence.
  • Quote: “I want to speak now To the ones I’ve said Meant nothing, And I want to call them all Mauricio”
    • Explanation: The admission reverses years of denial in a single line, naming every dismissed connection after the one that mattered.

Literary Devices:

• Fragmentation:
  • The poem is built from short, disconnected stanzas that jump across time rather than telling the memory in order, enacting the way it keeps resurfacing rather than staying resolved.
  • Quote: “but even now Tries to climb back Along the frayed thread of dreams”
    • Explanation: The "frayed thread" is itself an image of fragmentation – memory as something worn and broken rather than a continuous story.
• Simile:
  • Smith uses tender, physical similes to fix the memory of Mauricio in sensory detail.
  • Quote: “Mauricio at 13 with skin Like sunset over the Pacific”
    • Explanation: The simile is expansive and warm, in contrast with the guilt and concealment elsewhere in the poem.
• Unresolved Ending:
  • The poem ends mid-image, without a closing full stop, refusing to tidy the memory into a settled conclusion.
  • Quote: “Enormous Mauricio With the drunken legs And hands as large And white as magnolias—”
    • Explanation: The dash leaves the sentence, and the memory, open – the poem does not resolve what it feels about Mauricio, only returns to him.

Mood of the Poem:

The mood of “Dominion Over the Beasts of the Earth” is elegiac and unresolved. The speaker moves between tenderness toward the memory of Mauricio and guilt over what was concealed or denied. There is a sense of longing and regret, as the poem circles a feeling from adolescence that the adult speaker still cannot fully name or put down.

Conclusion:

In “Dominion Over the Beasts of the Earth,” Tracy K. Smith uses a title borrowed from Genesis ironically: the poem is not about power over nature but about a memory and a desire the speaker never learned to govern. Through fragmented structure, animal imagery, and unresolved, dash-broken syntax, Smith traces an adolescent connection with a boy named Mauricio that the adult speaker’s domesticated present life cannot fully contain or explain away. The poem closes not with insight but with an image – suggesting that some memories are lived with rather than mastered.