"The Deliverer" is a 32-line free verse poem broken up into three distinct sections. The first section begins with a heading announcing where the poem is set: a "convent" (a place where a community of nuns lives) in "Kerala," a state in India. By announcing the location up top, the poet conveys the importance of this setting: this isn't some imagined dystopia, but a real place in the real world.
The speaker then begins the poem itself by describing a conversation between her mother and a nun, who is explaining how the children living at the convent came into her care. This nun took the children in because "they were crippled or dark or girls." (Though the speaker narrates the poem in the present tense, she isn't necessarily there with her mother; more likely, she is imagining a scene from her mother's past.)
This blunt, matter-of-fact explanation makes it clear from the start that in India, being born with a disability, having dark skin, or simply being female puts children at a terrible disadvantage. The polysyndeton of this phrase—"crippled or dark or girls"—presents all these traits as equally undesirable; being a girl is no better than being born with a disability, which is no better than simply having dark skin. In an ideal society, none of these scenarios would result in a parent rejecting their own child. But in an impoverished, deeply patriarchal society, such children are often rejected as soon as they are born because they would become a financial burden to their parents.
Thick, back-of-the-throat /c/ alliteration and consonance add intensity to these lines:
How she came to collect children
Because they were crippled or dark or girls
The growling /r/ and /g/ sounds adds to the effect. The lines are sharp rather than soft and comforting.