When Dana returns to the past and gets closer to Weylin's house, she feels at home.
Explanation:
- Kevin is a progressive man. In the 1970s, when casual racism was still common in the United States, he saw racial equality as mandatory and was shocked and surprised by the prejudiced beliefs of other people. He married a black woman over the objections.
- Because he is a white man, he is not exposed to the kind of horrors that Dana, a black woman, must confront. And because he can be self-involved and insensitive, Kevin doesn’t make it his business to understand these horrors.
- Kevin’s experiences in the South suggest that only the most extraordinary members of any ruling class can fully empathize with oppressed members of society.
In my opinion, the whole poem is quite ironic - although she is mentioning the exultation and the royal color of death, the poem itself begins with the narrator saying that she cannot breathe - that she doesn't want to die.
So, I would say that the ironic parts are:
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea, -
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!
