I can definitely see your issue with this poem. I too was
perplexed at the idea of trying to paraphrase the poem without making myself an
observer.
I think you have to look at the last lines and
use them to put the situation together. This woman is beaten down. Her little girl has a
broken arm and "She doesn't like to talk/ about that," illustrating possibly, that it
was broken for her, probably by the same hand that is attached to the "arm raised over
them,/ Its motion [beginning] like a blessing."
This is the
story of a battered woman and her two abused children. It's not about the subway ride
and the people observing her. Rather it's about the silence that the woman has committed
herself to when she is not near her abuser and when she's in the presence of people that
could probably help her. Her's is a life that represents many lives of women and
children. The poem may be set in a subway car, but in reality, I think it's set anywhere
there is a woman hiding from abuse and having to remain silent.
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