"Woman to Man" concerns both the human sexual act and the period of gestation following conception. In the first stanza, the speaker lists vivid descriptions: "the eyeless labourer in the night" and "the selfless, shapeless seed" she holds. This seed is built for its resurrection day—the time when it will be given life. This process is silent, swift, and far from sight, occurring in the speaker's body. Though the seed has not encountered the outside world, it knows about the future "unimagined light."
In the second stanza, the speaker gives further descriptions of the development happening inside of her. It is not yet a child with a child's face, and it does not yet have a name. However, the zygote (fertilized egg that will develop into a child) is intimately known to the speaker and her partner. The zygote acts as their "hunter" and "chase": it both pursues and is pursued by the couple. When the couple engaged in the sexual act, the zygote was a third participant, who "lay in their embrace" as the outline of a possible future.
In the third stanza, the speaker continues with descriptive lists concerning human physiology and the creation of new life. The woman speaks about her partner's physical strength, the curve of her own breast, and the "precise crystals" of their eyes. The last lines of the stanza provide a metaphor for creating new life: it is "the blood's wild tree that grows / the intricate and folded rose."
In the poem's final stanza, the speaker declares that this is "the maker and the made; / ...the question and reply." In other words, the entire family is involved in the process of making new life. Each one (mother, father, and child) takes on the role of creator and creation. Each one shapes and is shaped by this process of creation. This task involves faith: one blindly and clumsily forges ahead in the dark. But then, a light will blaze along the edge of a blade, signaling change. The speaker asks her partner to hold her because once the labor of birth has started, she feels afraid.
