Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem
line-by-line. to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; - So death
takes those coins out to buy our speaker's life! - Guess we
should've seen that coming. Taking lives is kind of death's MO.
- It makes us wonder: what kind of currency is this? Who does
death pay? - This line has a strange way of setting up life and
death like a market place, a cycle of buying and selling. - The
sound of the purse snapping shut is kind of terrifying. What
might otherwise be an ordinary sound is amplified by the
relation to death. Who would have thought a purse could sound so
scary or so final? when death comes like the measle-pox; - The
re-imagining keeps going: now death's approach is like that of a
disease, specifically the measle-pox. - We're starting to catch
on that death can come in a number of ways. Big or small, slow
or sudden, with or without suffering (death with the purse was
scary, but didn't sound too painful; the measle-pox sounds like
it might be a rather