What's the deep meaning behind this poem?

Question

A Brown Girl Dead <-- Title

With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
To see herself tonight.

Give specific reasonings.

Answer 1

From what I can tell (and I haven't read this poem before), it looks like a statement about being ashamed of one's ethnicity. The girl is called "brown" and "dark," but three times the color white is used in the poem. The brown girl dies and finally attains the color she (and her mother?) wanted. She is "[laid] out in white" with white roses and white candles only after her death and her mother's sale of her wedding ring. So both had to sacrifice for the girl to become "white."

Answer 2

Dark Madonna-- possible pregnent-- definetion Madonna was used as a form of polite address for a married woman in an Italian-speaking area.

the mother gives up the symbol of here marrage the wedding ring
to
white dress her daughter dress as a bride.

the alter is set with candles on each end. two rose represent the love and purity of the girl..

Lord death if she was pregent she could have died because she did not want to have the baby

Answer 3

White indicates purity.
Brown, of course, race.
The wedding ring coupled with the sense of purity and the fact that the mother, not the husband, 'laid her out' gives me the impression that she was a bride who died a virgin, before her marriage could be fulfilled.
Very nice.

Answer 4

I guess that she is happy because after all she'll join the world of the white people. she's been segregated all her life and IF she could join them, even in death, she'll consider it a gain not a loss.

Em mm, hope this is useful

Answer 5

It is like a marrige it seems but at the same time it is like a death and old time life

Answer 6

there's no deep meaning here, just a nice rhyme about a nasty subject:death