The first stanza's images of age and decay separate the living son from his dead father and from the past. In an ordinary cardboard box, the son has found a letter that is "history," a pedestrian, common sort of history that was never widely known and that will be forgotten within a generation. It seems that the box has been hidden away, and although the letter is precious for having been "kept," this is likely the first time the son has seen his father's handwriting. Without emotion, the young man tells us flatly that he "read the words." The poem creates a further emotional distance describing the letter as that of "a soldier's, from the front," as if it could be from any man. The letter's message is simple and universal, writing of love and longing for home. The news is of a cancelled leave, and the soldier's resigned despair can be heard in his words: "My luck is at the bottom of the sea."