Lines 10 and 11 of Tawali's poem read as follows:
Let them keep the price of their labour but their eyes are mine.
In this poem, an old woman, near death, wishes to see her sons, Polin and Manuai, again. She wants them to come home to her before she dies. In these lines, she is saying that she doesn't want their money: this is what "price of their labour" means. Let them keep what...
Lines 10 and 11 of Tawali's poem read as follows:
Let them keep the price of their labour
but their eyes are mine.
In this poem, an old woman, near death, wishes to see her sons, Polin and Manuai, again. She wants them to come home to her before she dies. In these lines, she is saying that she doesn't want their money: this is what "price of their labour" means. Let them keep what wages they have earned, she says, but let them come to her, because she wants to look into their eyes ("their eyes are mine.") Since eyes are often understood in poetry as "the windows of the soul," we can interpret this to mean that she wants to see into their souls as well as their bodies again one more time before she dies. She is asserting that some part of them is hers--she is their mother, she gave birth to them (she is the tree and they are the fruit) and raised them.
Earlier in the poem, she likens sons to fruits, and says that fruit returns to its trunk, the mother, but that her sons are neglecting her. Right before lines 10 and 11 she says:
I see the sons of other women
returning. What is in their minds?
The "their" in the "What is in their minds?" is ambiguous: it could mean several things. It could refer to the minds of the sons of other women or the women themselves, but it could be asking the question, what is in her own sons' minds? That she is wondering about her own sons is supported by the repetition of "their" in line 10.
Lines 10 and 11 are the cry of dying woman who wants to see her sons one more time, not for the money they can give her, but for themselves, because they are her sons.
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