The poem depicts a boy swinging to and fro on a swing. The emphasis is on the activity and it seems he is enjoying himself immensely as the swing moves " faster and faster".
More gets known about the boy as the poem progresses. Reference is made to his "blue shirt" billowing "in the breeze", and its comparison with "a tattered kite". What is here revealed is his background and his poverty which the words "blue" and "tattered" suggest.
As the boy's movement on the swing intensifies, more is suggested about the happenings on the swing. Now its rapid motion becomes disorienting as the boy loses bearing in the metaphor of "east becomes west". "north turns to south" and "the four cardinal points/ meet in his head". At this point, it is suggested, confusion sets in and.the boy is no longer at ease in his former state where he seems to be at home in familiar poverty and class.
The crisis of identity is then reached in the final stanza in the cry of "Mother!", in the one and only first line, to be followed by the series of rhetorical questions in the succeeding lines. These questions allude to the boy's origin and aspiration ending in the profundity of the line - "Why was my father jailed?" It seems that at this point the veil has been removed from the boy's face and, like a clairvoyant, he can see the unacceptable situation in which he and his race find themselves. The poignancy of the revelation is felt, rather than said, as a world of innocence crashes before the boy's eyes.