I was reading through the Hirshfield poems at the Poetry Foundation (thanks, BF). I came across one with some interesting metaphors, but I can't figure out the syntax of a couple of lines. Hope someone can help me out. Here's the poem

SEAWATER STIFFENS CLOTH by Jane Hirshfield

Seawater stiffens cloth long after it’s dried.
As pain after it’s ended stays in the body:
A woman moves her hands oddly
because her grandfather passed through
a place he never spoke of. Making
instead the old jokes with angled fingers.
Call one thing another’s name long enough,
it will answer. Call pain seawater, tree, it will answer.
Call it a tree whose shape of   branches happened.
Call what branching happened a man
whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own.
Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.
Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.

Here's what I have and what I lack --

Call it a tree whose shape of   branches happened.
(pain = tree whose shape of branches happened)
Call what branching happened a man
whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own.
(branching = a man whose job was to break fingers or lose his own)
Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.
(fingers angled like branches = ???)
Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.
(girl / woman = tree, seawater angled by silence)

Getting off on arthritis..a metahor too good for JH to use only once or twice!

Fingers..with severe arthritis..crooked like bent twigs..branches..Often associated with old age..
the grandfather... an inherited affliction here?

Ye Gads..Was he an old sailor? Family tree..is there a fish in that angled/arthritic hand?
Family secrets..Don't ask, they won't tell..and who cares!
A

SEAWATER STIFFENS CLOTH by Jane Hirshfield

Seawater stiffens cloth long after it’s dried. As pain after it’s ended stays in the body: A woman moves her hands oddly because her grandfather passed through a place he never spoke of. Making instead the old jokes with angled fingers. Call one thing another’s name long enough, it will answer. Call pain seawater, tree, it will answer. Call it a tree whose shape of branches happened. Call what branching happened a man whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own. Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples, to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking. Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.

Hi MA and Art: I think it means arthritis, as well. I came to that conclusion away from the Fray, only to see your post Art. But boy, I was searching: <link>

And, all I needed to do– if we are correct - was carefully read the poem in the first place. Imagine that.

My Nana’s favorite joke was: “I’m going to bed with Arthur tonight”. After a pregnant pause, accompanied by her famous impish grin, she would add: “Arthur Itus”. She never tired of telling that joke and we never tired of acting like it was the funniest thing we had ever heard and acting like we had never heard it before.

P.S. MaryAnn..
A thought..

The canvas sails of the old sailing ships were called 'the shrouds.' The siffened cloth in this ;poem.. The winding sheets of a family tree stiffened by memory..preserved by the sea..Was there a guilt passed on in this family..something not to be spoken of..re: Tree, apples..a family secret that carries guilt..harm done to others to save (the grandfather)himself.. Not the Titanic..but many were beaten away from the lifeboats so those on them could survive..Others have worked in concentration camps inflicting pain on others to keep their own jobs there and live...and so forth..
And what of grandchildren born after the fact,, in families that condoned and took part in genocide or condoned it...

One can read many things into this poem..but I believe that it is about the transmission of guilt;
a family tree watered by old blood.
A

Artemesia and HAP, I think the poem is about psychic pain, not arthritis. But that wasn't my question.

I need help understanding the grammatical construction of this clump of words --

Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.

The poem is a series of re-namings.

We can call pain "a tree whose shape of branches happened."

We can call branching "a man whose job was to break fingers or lose his own" (perhaps why the girl's grandfather never spoke of that place)

We can call fingers angled like branches ----- ??? what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking ???

What is that "what" doing there? Should it be "which" to refer back to "fingers"? Are words missing?

"To give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking" refers to the apples, but the whole thing doesn't fit together. Most important, where is the re-naming??

MA: Artemesia and HAP, I think the poem is about psychic pain, not arthritis. But that wasn't my question.

You thought I thought the poem was about arthritis?

Hi MaryAnn, before we go on here, is this one of those: Actually, I have written a few poets and asked them a question about their poems things? Do you already know the answers? Do you have an angle?

Seawater does stiffen cloth after it dries (oops, I left out the “r” the first time, sorry).

The only pain I know of that stays in the body is the memory of pain and phantom limb pain. I think, currently, the pain is being renamed. And, a woman is being renamed. They are being renamed in the Calls, call.

(…or not…)?

HAP:

MA: Artemesia and HAP, I think the poem is about psychic pain, not arthritis. But that wasn't my question.

You thought I thought the poem was about arthritis?

Hi MaryAnn, before we go on here, is this one of those: Actually, I have written a few poets and asked them a question about their poems things? Do you already know the answers? Do you have an angle?

Seawater does stiffen cloth after it dries (oops, I left out the “r” the first time, sorry).

The only pain I know of that stays in the body is the memory of pain and phantom limb pain. I think, currently, the pain is being renamed. And, a woman is being renamed. They are being renamed in the Calls, call.

(…or not…)?

Not!

Call what branching happened a man

Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.

Dang…I hate it when this happens…

Hi, MaryAnn, I think the real question here is whether it's worthwhile to try to understand this poem. The syntax is so tortuous (and torturous) that I lose interest.

MA..

I didn't think the poem was about 'arthritis,' I thought that arthritis was a metaphor for the pain and twistings of that ..I believe..'family tree.' See my later post. There is a story embedded in this poem.
A

Artemesia:

MA..

I didn't think the poem was about 'arthritis,' I thought that arthritis was a metaphor for the pain and twistings of that ..I believe..'family tree.' See my later post. There is a story embedded in this poem.
A

Yah, what Art said.

To attempt an answer based on your question....from a syntax viewpoint the "what" in question refers back to the "what" in "Call what branching happened a man." You are correct in your thinking: the next line uses "whose" which would seem to clear the way for the "which" you are seeking in the peeling apples line. I'm wondering what the OED says about "what..... Anyway, if you follow that sentence the "renaming" is "afterwards" and involves the girl, not the branch. I guess I see the apples as a bridge to the renaming?

SEAWATER STIFFENS CLOTH by Jane Hirshfield

Seawater stiffens cloth long after it’s dried.
As pain after it’s ended stays in the body:
A woman moves her hands oddly
because her grandfather passed through
a place he never spoke of. Making
instead the old jokes with angled fingers.
Call one thing another’s name long enough,
it will answer. Call pain seawater, tree, it will answer.
Call it a tree whose shape of   branches happened.
Call what branching happened a man
whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own.
Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.
Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.

I agree with IT that it's tortuous syntax - but that would make the syntax mirror the message - plus you've beckoned the detective in me, so a stab at it - Call it solving a riddle what should be hours spent working ...

I think the "???" you are struggling with would best be filled by something like "peeler of apples to feed his granddaughter" ... The "what" in that line is indeed awkward and opaque - and partly because "what" is used in the prior euphemistic metaphor ("Call what branching ...") in the first half of the 'equation' and now in your line-in-question, the "what" introduces the second half of the equation ...

My first sense of the context for this poem's "story" was something like Chernobyl - or somewhere that a genetically transmittable trauma resulted from something violent or tragic that was transmitted to the granddaughter to make her fingers also move oddly ... But then it came to seem that, no the woman's odd finger movement was more in curious wonder and empathy with a grandfather who had been somewhere like the Holocaust and had been obliged in a concentration camp to torture - break others' fingers into angled branches (and sooner or later the same had happened to him) ... and how euphemism (and the grandfather's stoic and secretive survival strategy to make jokes out of the legacy of pain) served a kind of desperate forgetfulness and made him - and now the granddaughter too (by honoring the pain of his memories with silence) internalize and transform the twisting, distorting sensation of being 'broken' ...

zinya..

I see that we've struck into a similar wavelength about this poem. I wonder if you had read my post..We both arrived at similar views of the family/tree history re holocaust or other horrific event..

We both saw the storyline ..of possible torture inflicted, ramifications concealed..and the ensuing silence as a legacy of denial/guilt and that arthritic metahor of a twisted family tree..ineradicable pain now touching the new branch, the granddaughter. We have made different value judgments from the metaphors involved..but the possible tableaus are there to be seen and read in this poem.

If Hirshfield had pruned her words more carefully, I think an unnecessary overkill/tangle of branches/offshoots/tree...She would have exposed what could have been a decent poem.
A

Hi, MaryAnn, I think the real question here is whether it's worthwhile to try to understand this poem.

Well, if I didn't think so, I wouldn't be spending the time with it.

(Have you read Philip Roth's The Human Stain? I haven't, because I've read so many of his books and want to try other writers. But I just saw the movie and was blown away.)