The first stanza of the poem is given over mostly to the speaker, who is living in a house on "'hardly passionate Marlborough Street,'"

where even the man scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, and is a "young Republican."

The situation is reflected in the last stanza, where Lepke is seen "dawdling off to his little segregated cell full / of things forbidden the common man." Like the speaker, Lepke is isolated from other men; and in the fine lines that end the poem, this association is both confirmed and denied. . . .

"Memories of West Street and Lepke" is itself an "agonizing reappraisal," as is the whole of Life Studies; but this more or less explicit contrast serves almost to link the two men rather than to separate them, while the concentration on death and the "air / of lost connections", are remarkably applicable to the poetry of this volume. The same relationship obtains between Lepke and Lowell as does between the "lost connections" and the "sooty clothesline entanglements" that the poet saw from the roof of the West Street Jail. The figure of Lepke is more a mirage than a mirror image - as the "oasis" suggests - and consequently the technique of the poem itself exemplifies the "air / of lost connections." That there is a connection at some level between the poet-speaker and the gangster is intimated by Lowell's recollection of himself in "During Fever" as "part criminal and yet a Phi Bete." That description of himself is relevant to "During Fever" because the poem goes ahead to recall the "rehashing" of his father's character, but both the description and the "rehashing" are also relevantto this poem; if Lepke is a murderer in fact, the poet-speaker is one in intent. This is to put the matter too bluntly, perhaps, but what Lowell seems to suspect in these poems is that any man's murder taints other men.