The Illiterate

The Illiterate
William Meredith
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/Illiterate.html

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

I liked this poem when I first read it because it was fairly easy to understand and maybe I'm just lazy but I like poems that I can understand easily. Part of what makes the poem straightforward and easy to understand is that it is written with no enjambed lines and very clear and concise language. It contains an extended simile comparing what it feels like to feel "goodness" from another person, which I take to sort of mean that someone was kind to the speaker for the first time or perhaps even showed the speaker love, to someone who is illiterate and received a letter for the first time. Not only is the experience new, but the illiterate person has no idea how to make sense out of the letter and what to do with it. There seems to be some deeper meaning I've yet to discern based on the last two lines, but if I'm going to write my paper about this poem then I should probably figure it out.