Ted Hughes begins "Anniversary" with a surreal description of his mother in the afterlife. She appears, Hughes says, "in her feathers of flame": a phrase that suggests she is framed by fiery wings. The fricative alliteration of "feathers of flame" evokes the flickering of those flames, which transform Hughes's mother into an imposing (maybe even frightening) presence. Indeed, she "grows taller," Hughes continues: a nod not to literal growth but to the idea that she has become a more towering figure in Hughes's mind.
Line 2 then introduces an important date: May 13th. This is the anniversary of the poem's title, but it's not clear yet of what. The speaker withholds the answer for another three lines, generating suspense. That suspense is drawn out through the use of caesurae. Each caesura forces the reader to pause, to take an extra beat, as with the full stops in lines 2 and 3:
Grows taller. Every May Thirteenth
I see her with her sister Miriam. I lift
Finally, in line 5, Hughes reveals what's so important about May 13th: this is the day his mother died. (Hughes's mother, Edith, died on May 13th, 1969.) The date has been recorded on a page torn out of a diary (a British term for a daybook or calendar), having been "jotted" down by Hughes's brother. When Hughes goes to "lift" the page, he sees his mother and his aunt, Miriam, appear before him.
- Some context: Miriam died at the age of 18, well before Hughes was born. According to Hughes, a vision of Miriam would often appear to his mother as a consoling presence shortly before someone close to her died. "My mother described her as being made of flame," he said. "As if she were covered with many-colored feathers of soft, pouring flame." Hughes is clearly drawing from these real memories here and throughout the poem.
Hughes presents all this quite matter-of-factly. The language throughout these opening lines is remarkably casual given their subject. Hughes doesn't say that his brother somberly recorded the date of death, but simply that he "jotted" it down—a word that makes it seem almost like an afterthought. The phrase "Ma died today" is similarly blunt and straightforward; there's nothing dramatic or particularly emotional about this recording.
Hughes also doesn't seem surprised or astonished to see his dead mother and her sister. Instead, the apparitions are described plainly, as though their appearance is natural and expected. The speaker's mother is dead, and yet, the speaker's mother is here; that's simply how it is. It's unclear whether Hughes deliberately conjures his mother in his mind (i.e., by flipping to that "torn-off diary page") or if she arrives unbidden, pulled by the force of his grief. Either way, it sounds as though Hughes has come to anticipate this vision every year.