This moving lyric poem in three sestet stanzas in unrhymed free verse is about a World War II memory that seems to have occurred in London (or somewhere with fog like London) and that continually recurs to the poetic speaker, the persona. The poetic speaker in this poem may be the poet himself because of the nature of the memory and his reaction to it.
London-like place: "station platform after an air raid. / [...] / the fog-filled valley of a night."
The persona has this recurring memory that is "strangely fresh" and wonders why a memory of such a "simple thing" should so persistently come upon him as though "fallen" upon him in the "winter wind." This memory of a day, as he tells it, is indeed simple: a country road seen from a train; a man on a train platform whistling a tune in the aftermath of a bomb air raid; the fragrance of a woman's perfume in a fog-shrouded London night. This is what this poem is about: a memory of a day in the war.
A plausible thesis might be that stanza three answers the questions in stanza two by implying that he lost his wife to a war related event and that thus these seemingly random events clung together as the woman's perfume clung to his thoughts because they remind him of his lost love (perfume), her absence (whistling following air raid), and their life together (the country road).
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