Because “George Gray” is one of more than 200 poems conceived as an interrelated single work, to illuminate the poem one might begin by looking at another poem from the same work, the epitaph of Mrs. George Reece, a courageous single mother left to raise her kids after her husband is sent off to prison. The inscription on her stone reads, in part, “To this generation I would say / Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty / It may serve a turn in your life.” This exactly defines the imperative of George Gray’s story.

George Gray’s poem is a cautionary tale, as much a warning as hard-earned advice. George offers advice on how to live, ironically, as he is someone who decided not to truly live. Learn from my regret, George Gray argues. Read my tombstone and learn from it what I never did: “To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness / But life without meaning is the torture” (14). There can be no more ironic word spoken by a resident of the limbo of an afterlife than the word “now”—now, George Gray admits in Line 10, now I see what I should have done, how I should have lived.