She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged—
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
Earlier in the poem, the speaker shows only hate for the woman beating the child, but towards this ending, he seems to mature and identifies with the woman a little bit better. He realizes that the woman may not be beating the kid for no reason, and instead may be perpetuating a cycle of abuse begun when she was a child (or even before).
The Whipping