By beginning and ending "For the Union Dead" with images of breaking bubbles, Robert Lowell wants the reader to recognize
that Colonel Shaw should never have been given a monument and he would like to break it
that the aquarium should be rebuilt in the place where the monument to Colonel Shaw is standing
that the monument of Colonel Shaw is no more meaningful than the torn down aquarium
that the monument of Colonel Shaw, like the aquarium, will one day likely be destroyed and forgotten