This imagery -- both of a ship and of insecurity and simple "wrongness" -- continues when the speaker says in a direct metaphor that "The sky / is a torn sail" (9-10). On a practical level, this is an image of further uselessness and insecurity aboard the "ship" that is this house.

A torn sail cannot provide any guidance or momentum; in essence, the ship that belongs to a torn sail is a dead one. As the houses have already been compared to ships, the "torn sail" of the sky is automatically -- and no doubt intentionally -- associated with the houses that have heretofore been the main subject of the poem. Thus, the night sky fails to provide any further assurance of security or comfort to the dead ships that are the houses.

Furthermore, the image of a ship with a torn sail is simply spooky -- it reminds one of ghost ships and dark, supernatural doings. The feeling of a supernatural quality is intensified by the use of the word "giants" and the speaker's comment that she feels "like them up there: / exposed, larger than life" (13-14). The supernatural aspects of the poem are not really imbued with any sort of power, however, but rather the speaker seems to view herself at odds with nature. This can also be seen in the speaker's identification as a "naked man" (26). It is difficult to remove all biographical information from the reading of a poem, especially given Rich's pioneering work in feminism and lesbian criticism, and her dedication of the poem to gender critic Denis Levertov. The speaker's identification as a man -- especially a naked one whose "tools are the wrong ones / for what I have to do" -- can have many meanings, but ignoring the sexual and gender implications in a poem by this author would be as foolish as limiting the reading with such gender and sexuality-based interpretations (24-25).

Leaving aside the gender interpretations,...

The poem's appearance on the page is almost mast-like, which is perhaps an intentional outgrowth of the ship imagery central to the content of the poem. The regularity of the line length gives the appearance of the poem a marked contrast to the images of confusion and corruption of otherwise solid structures, suggesting that perhaps the poem is as confused and corruptible as the houses and ships that offer so little in the way of concrete meaning and safety in the poem. Interestingly, the longest line of the poem -- and therefore the one that most breaks up this sense of regularity created by the physical image of the poem on the page -- is the one in which the speaker suggests that "with a shade of difference" the security so lacking in the poem and in the speaker's life could be found (29). The line provides the "shade of difference" in the physical world of the poem, as well as in the world of images created by the poem.
Unpacking this poem could be -- and undoubtedly has been -- the work of much more experienced scholars with much more space to devote to the possible interpretations of each of the poems images. Only a few have been touched on here, but the multitude of variant readings are proof of Adrienne Rich's skill. The speaker's identification with the builders could be read as a signal that humanity itself is floundering and lost at sea in the world of the poem and the yes of the speaker, yet it could also be seen as a false connection perceived out of the speaker's desperation for some sort of solid connection. Either way, the speaker in this poem is certainly distraught, and Rich draws the reader into that experience.

Works Cited

Rich, Adrienne. "The Roofwalker." Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974. New York:…