Down the M4- Dannie Abse

Content
 As a man drives back into his home town, to visit his family, he is haunted by the prospect of bad news- death. Yet perhaps this poem can be interpreted as a dying out of ones traditional heritage, the 'mother' acting as a metaphor for the 'mother tongue'- either way, the poem explores the fears of approaching death.

Analysis
There is a clear lexical field of death from the start, 'disrobed' 'perishable' 'into the hole', yet still there is an underlying tone of affection as his acknowledges the 'beautiful face' and grace of his mother in her 'ninth decade'. Along with this affection, there is a comical element too- the common occurrence of boring family stories that we can all relate to turning our own hair grey, though perhaps this has a deeper meaning of life's cyclical nature, always concluding in death. The river Tawe, as an image, is used throughout  Abse's poetry, here the transition of it running 'fluent' to 'stones stonier' reflects the congestion of the water, but also the narrowing freedoms, much like the vibrant, youthful 'leaping' of bridges in the side mirror, that disintegrate into the 'shrinking' image of constricted elderly years. The final declarative, 'it won't keep.' ends the poem on a very sombre note, that nothing lasts.
Yet the pronoun 'it' invites a new reading of the poem, perhaps not referring to life but to the Yiddish Heritage instead. Towards the end, he does not sing a 'Hymn' but an 'old Yiddish tune' highlighting the religious devotion he shares with his culture, just as he acknowledges that his 'mothers mother spoke with such an accent', the key here is the past tense 'spoke' which imitates a nostalgic tone of sorrow, the dying out of heritage across cultures which leads us to question whether it is this tradition that 'won't keep' in an age of secularization.
The very title, 'down the m4' connotes journey and movement, synonymous with the fluent movement of the Tawe and the drive towards Cardiff, yet it also suggests disintegration of some sort, an anit-climax idea. The run on lines of the early stanza create a confusion, accentuated by the caesura, 'my mothers news.' This declarative is emulated in the final closing declarative, 'it wont keep' creating a circular structure of finality and death.