"An Unknown Girl" is filled with repetition that makes certain words and images pop out at the reader. For example, the speaker repeats the lines "In the evening bazaar" and "an unknown girl / is hennaing my hand" multiple times throughout the poem. Each repetition is interspersed with slightly different details: "studded with neon" in lines 1-4, "for a few rupees" in lines 10-13, and "very deftly" in lines 28-31. These repetitions become hypnotic, almost like a mantra, as though the speaker is trying to remain present in (or recall) this tender moment of connection with India. The speaker then repeats elements of these lines in the poem's final moments, though not verbatim:
longing for the unknown girl
in the neon bazaar.
The key words "unknown girl," "neon," and "bazaar" all suggest the way this experience will continue to haunt the speaker when she returns home.
There are other important repetitions throughout the poem as well. The word "peacock" also appears in lines 16 and 33, for example, highlighting the importance of this symbolic connection to India. The words "brown" and "line[s]" also appear more than once:
- "She squeezes a wet brown line" (line 5)
- "a peacock spreads its lines" (line 16)
- "I have new brown veins" (line 27)
- "to these firm peacock lines" (line 33)
- "the dry brown lines" (line 39)
The "brown lines" of the speaker's peacock drawing spread not just across the speaker's palm but through the poem itself.
There are also more specific types of repetition throughout the poem, such as the anaphora in lines 5-7:
She squeezes a wet brown line
from a nozzle.
She is icing my hand.
In addition to creating a steady, hypnotic rhythm, this anaphora emphasizes the importance of this stranger who is making the speaker feel more at home in India. The repetition of "cloth" at the ends of lines 24-25, meanwhile, suggests the dizzying array of banners that "canopy" the speaker.
Polyptoton, another kind of repetition, plays an important role in the simile of lines 32-25:
I am clinging
to these firm peacock lines
like people who cling
to the sides of a train.
The repetition of the word "cling" conveys the speaker's desperate desire to hold onto this link to India, a feeling the speaker compares to way the people might desperately grip the side of a moving train.
Finally, the speaker says that after they leave this place, India will continue to "appear[] and reappear[]" to them. The repetition of the root word "appears" suggests that this experience hasn't satisfied the speaker's need for this place but has rather stoked it; the speaker will continue to long for this land and its people and culture long after she's left it.