In “The World as Meditation,” action suspends perpetually as one character ostensibly waits for the arrival of another, one who remains in transition between spaces. While the state of suspension serves as a metaphor for the creative process, the poem’s imagery evokes repetition to underscore the daily ritual of waiting for this expected arrival that never comes.

The poem’s narrative itself is a recurrence, an echo of an epic in part: Penelope in the aftermath of The Odyssey. The poem’s few events, too, constitute repetitions: In Line 23, Penelope repeats Ulysses’s name as she combs her hair. Language also repeats throughout the poem in words and phrases. Key images repeat, shifting context and at times reflected in aural or physical form. “The trees had been mended” in Line 10 repeats “The trees are mended” from Line 2. “Friend and dear friend,” a phrase representing Penelope and Ulysses but also any corresponding relation, appears first in Line 9 and again in Line 20.

Ulysses functions as an image rather than a character in this context.