The first part of "Descending Figure," The Wanderer, begins by bringing readers to a desolate scene. Presumably, Glück is the child and observes the sunset, leaving readers with a barren feeling. She writes, "The sun hung low in the iron sky,/ringed with cold plumage." She describes the sun as something with feathers, potentially a bird. Then Glück describes the ritual-like play that the other kids around her seemed to be engaging in, while she felt "emptiness". Further, she uses the word "rite" which means ritual/ceremony/service, with religious connotations, which may be a homophone, when she states, "If I could rite to you/about this emptiness-." The reader learns that this poem takes place in the fall, Glück, painting a scenic fall evening. Then, this section of the poem takes an even more solemn turn in the next lines. She details her mother holding her sister observing the kids playing. We later learn in the poem, and also known from her biography that Glück's sister was not healthy, and would not grow up to play with the other kids.  So, the lines "Everyone was gone; I was playing/ in the dark street with my other sister, whom death had made so lonely." have an even greater impact. Glück leaves it to the reader to decide if she was playing alone, imagining her sister still alive, or if she was actually playing with her sister. Glück ends this section on a contemplative note, "Why was she never called?/ Often I would let my own name glide past me/ though I craved its protection[.]" These lines show Glück openly thinking about her sister's fate and how Glück herself may have felt when it was her name being called home instead of her sister's name. 

Moving into the next section, The Sick Child, readers are immediately confronted with an interesting epigraph. The epigraph is of a museum is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The name of this section is derived from the name of a painting in the museum. The painting is called The Sick Child by Edvard Munch. Further, we learn that this stanza takes place during the winter: “A small child/ is ill, has wakened. It is winter, past midnight.” Glück presents a harrowing scene of her mother embracing her sick child, "And the child/ relaxes in her mother's arms./ The mother does not sleep;/ she stares" These lines pull the focus of the poem to her sister's failing condition. She continues, "By spring the child will die." At this point in the poem, Glück has established that her sister is ill and that she is terminal. Further, this poem is also more fragmented, with shorter lines in comparison to the other parts of "Descending Figure". This choice could be attributed to the way that people speak often in broken sentences when talking about something emotional, especially the death of a loved one. Glück continues on to express her feelings about her sister, she writes "Let her be alone,/ without memory, as the other wake terrified, scraping the dark, paint from their faces." exposing the reader to intense imagery surrounding grief. Glück not only expresses she feels as though it was cruel to love a dying child but also makes the claim that allowing her to make memories and live the allusion of a normal life is unfair. Additionally, the imagery of people painstakingly wiping dark paint from their faces could be a metaphor for the other people in her family concealing their grief.

Lastly, the final section of the poem is titled  For My Sister. Immediately the reader learns that her sister has passed, "Far away my sister is moving in her crib./ The dead ones are like that,/ always the last to quiet." This dark introduction sets the tone of this entire section. The last line of the first stanza is a nod to the notion that even though her sister is physically quiet because she has passed, she is "the last to quiet" because her memory perpetually lingers. In the next stanza, Glück delves into the processing of her sister's death. She thinks of all the milestones her sister will never reach, "they will not learn to speak/ but remain uncertainly pressing against the wooden bars," The imagery of the coffin being wooden jail cell bars is a masterful way to describe the tragedy of a child's death. The child is forever stuck in the ground as if confined to a cell for eternity.  Then, in the final stanza, she imagines her sister calling for her, as a healthy baby should. Glück created a tone of remorse in the third line; "I should go to her;/ perhaps if I sang very softly," The last line of the entire poem is "her head covered with black fathers", leaning on the imagery of feathers used at the beginning of the poem. Also, the feathers being black may signify the halo, her sister an angel with a crown of death. Furthermore, Glück juxtaposes the color of her sister's white skin with the color of the black feather, to bring attention to her innocent shrouded in misfortune.