Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre

The Poem: 

My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes
His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books
Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age
fade homeward through the humid monsoon night.
Now I can see him getting off the train
Like a word dropped from a long sentence.
He hurries across the length of the grey platform,
Crosses the railway line, enters the lane,
His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onward.

 

Home again, I see him drinking weak tea,
Eating a stale chapati, reading a book.
He goes into the toilet to contemplate
Man’s estrangement from a man-made world.
Coming out he trembles at the sink,
The cold water running over his brown hands,
A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists.
His sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to sleep
Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming
Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking
Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.

Dilip Chitre (1938-2009)

Summary and Analysis:

Dilip Chitre is an important  post-independence India poet. He was bilingual and wrote in Marathi as well as English. This poem is presumably set in Mumbai, and in keeping with the rest of this list of poems under CIE 0486 syllabus, is about love – in this case, familial love.

In the first stanza, the father is commuting home after work, and he presents a pathetic sight. He is on board a ‘late evening’ train, and the implication of the end of the day sets the tone for the theme of the irrelevancy and maltreatment of elderly people in the rest of the poem. The train ride seems to have an oppressive atmosphere, the commuters are not chatting happily away – instead, they are all estranged from each other and are ‘silent’ on this long commute home. The lighting is depressing, a ‘yellow light’ shines on the commuters, leaving a sense of the lack of maintenance and care of the train that echoes the poem’s theme of the neglect of the elderly. The description of the father’s eyes as ‘unseeing’ draws attention to the poignant fact that he is estranged from life itself. Instead of understanding that the father is simply ‘blind’ to life, the adjective ‘unseeing’ reminds readers that the father once ‘saw’ life, and it is only old age that has undone that ability to ‘see’ or engage with life.

The father is the picture of an uncared for person. His clothes are ‘soggy’, wet from the rain, and his raincoat is not just wet, but ‘stained with mud’, as if his state is always worse for wear. His bag is ‘stuffed with books’ tells us that he is a person who thirsts for knowledge and has an enthusiasm for life at least in respect of books. Yet the bag that holds these books is ‘falling apart’, and we understand from this, that even one of the core interests in his life is not keeping him together. The enjambement of ‘stuffed with books//is falling apart’ neatly conveys the precarious state of the books, that they are nearly about to fall out of the bag.

The key line in the latter half of this stanza is ‘like a word dropped from a long sentence’. This is a line that vividly relates the irrelevancy and insignificance of the elderly father to the world. In the process of trimming down a long sentence, one has to make the value judgment of which words are not essential to the meaning and structure of the sentence, and accordingly, delete those words from the sentence. Likewise, in the hierarchy of social structure, there are only a certain sector of the population, or certain people, who are considered essential the meaning and structure of the community, and in this poem, the elderly, or at least, the father figure, is not one of them. He is annexed from the sector of the population considered essential.

Against these immeasurable, oppressive forces, the contrast of the futility of the father’s determination in ‘hurrying onward’ despite sandals that are ‘sticky with mud’ shows up the poignancy of society’s abandonment of its elderly population.

In the second stanza, the setting changes to the father and speaker’s home. Again, the picture presented is of a neglected person – after a long journey home, the father doesn’t enjoy hot tea or tasty food, but instead drinks ‘weak tea’, and a ‘stale chapati’. Instead of being greeted by welcoming company, his companionship comes in the form of  a ‘book’.

The disorder of his life is also shown up by the choice of his place for contemplation about life – the toilet. The place where humans go to dispose of bodily waste, to put it politely. It’s almost as if he doesn’t even have respect for his own philosophical musings to find a more dignified place to do his thinking. ‘Man’s estrangement from a man-made world’ is a powerful line. It presents to us the paradox that this world and its social hierarchies and structures are created by man, but men do not look out for all of its own kind, and so the world that man created is also the world that neglects much of the population of men. (If you’re being pedantic about technical words in the GCSE exam, you could talk about the repetition of word ‘man’)

His physical fragility is conveyed by the image of him ‘trembling’ at the sink, and the rest of the stanza speaks of the old man’s immeasurable loneliness.

Even his closest kin – his children, reject his presence and his mind. They do not share their life with him or trust him with their personal ‘secrets’. At the arrival of bedtime, he is content with the ‘static’ of the radio, instead of genuine programmes on the radio. This is reflective of his life in general, as portrayed in the poem. He does not get the fulfilling version of life that everyone else who can tune into radio programmes do, but he is still content with the dysfunctional version of life that he receives.

The last two clauses of the poem are very poignant though. They do not point to the discontent or complaints that the old man has about the broken life that he leads. Instead, they point to the escape methods that the old man has – he escapes into his own mental world of ancestry, drama and grandeur. Despite the cruelty he has been shown, and the total collapse of a functional life, the elderly father has the bravery to find solace in creating his own mental drama and world.

Coming home by Owen Sheers

The Poem: 

My mother’s hug is awkward,
As if the space between her open arms
is reserved for a child, not this body of a man.
In the kitchen she kneads the dough,
flipping it and patting before laying in again.
The flour makes her over, dusting
The hairs on her cheek, smoothing out wrinkles.

Dad still goes and soaks himself in the rain.
Up to his elbows in hedge, he works
on a hole that reappears every Winter,
its edges laced with wet wool –
frozen breaths snagged on the blackthorn.
When he comes in again his hair is wild,
and his pockets are filled with filings of hay.

All seated, my grandfather pours the wine.
His unsteady hand makes the neck of the bottle
shiver on the lip of each glass;
it is a tune he plays faster each year.

Summary and Analysis

Sheers’ poem expresses the pain of the speaker on witnessing the inevitable old age of his family on his return to home. Through understanding the speakers’ refusal to come to terms with the cruel effects of old age on his mother, father and grandfather, the poignancy of the situation is intensified for the reader.

The shrinking physical form of the mother is simply interpreted as a neutral trait, as ‘awkwardness’, and as a problem of deliberate design. It is not that old age has forced upon his mother rigidity of limbs and joints that stops her ‘open arms’ from embracing her adult son, but it is simply a natural quirk of his mother’s physical form – it was build to embrace a child, that’s all. The sight of an elderly lady with stiff limbs still kneading dough diligently should be a sad and humbling sight, but instead it is expressed as a scene of youthful make over, as if the scattered flour on the mothers’ face acts like cosmetic products, ‘smoothing out wrinkles’. The tragedy of irrecoverable youth is also drawn out by this last image in the first stanza.

The actions and description of the father is also similarly made poignant through the speakers’ interpretation of the father’s motivation for his actions. Drenched in the rain in his work in maintaining the garden, the speaker chooses instead to interpret his father as voluntarily going out to ‘soak himself in the rain’. The hardship of gardening is also reinforced through the imagery of the father’s frozen breaths as ‘wet wool’. An opaque, white, fluffy material, the comparison of the father’s breath in the air with wool is a testament to the freezing weather that the father is working in, and the romanticizing of such frozen breath as wool ironically draws out the extremely unromantic reality of working on a garden hedge in the rain and cold.

Finally, the grandfather’s arthritis that worsens noticeably every year is understood instead as a musical tune that he plays with more speed, more expertise every year. The irony of such a comparison, that the grandfather does not have choice in the worsening arthritis, and it is far from being a skill that is deliberately cultivated, draws out the cruel of old age, and the speaker’s difficulty in coming to terms with its effects on his family members.

lionheart by Amanda Chong

You came out of the sea,
skin dappled scales of sunlight;
Riding crests, waves of fish in your fists.
Washed up, your gills snapped shut.
Water whipped the first breath of your lungs,
Your lips’ bud teased by morning mists.

You conquered the shore, its ivory coast.
Your legs still rocked with the memory of waves.
Sinews of sand ran across your back-
Rising runes of your oceanic origins.
Your heart thumped- an animal skin drum
heralding the coming of a prince.

In the jungle, amid rasping branches,
trees loosened their shadows to shroud you.
The prince beheld you then, a golden sheen.
Your eyes, two flickers; emerald blaze
You settled back on fluent haunches;
The squall of a beast. your roar, your call.

In crackling boats, seeds arrived, wind-blown,
You summoned their colours to the palm
of your hand, folded them snugly into loam,
watched saplings swaddled in green,
as they sunk roots, spawned shade,
and embraced the land that embraced them.

Centuries, by the sea’s pulmonary,
a vein throbbing humming bumboats –
your trees rise as skyscrapers.
Their ankles lost in swilling water,
as they heave themselves higher
above the mirrored surface.

Remember your self: your raw lion heart,
Each beat a stony echo that washes
through ribbed vaults of buildings.

Remember your keris, iron lightning
ripping through tentacles of waves,
double-edged, curved to a point-

flung high and caught unsheathed, scattering
five stars in the red tapestry of your sky.

Summary and Analysis

The subject of the poem, ‘you’, is the Merlion statute, which stands in this work as a national symbol of Singapore.

First stanza

The first stanza describes the Merlion at the dawn of the creation of Singapore, imbuing the creature with a mythical dimension, as the imagery of it revealing itself from the sea, riding on waves is in line with the behaviour of Greek gods and mythical legends. The image here is a powerful one, as not only is the Merlion portrayed to be mythical, it is at the same time true to its nature as half-fish, half-lion as it is clutching fish in its fists whilst adapting from using gills to using its lungs instead as it approaches land. Chong cleverly conveys the essence of the Merlion here in the same way that all powerful deities are portrayed – mythical, ethereal yet concrete and present in the flesh simultaneously.

The imagery of the Merlion and its appearance on the sea in this stanza is vivid because alliteration of ‘w’ sounds over three lines in the stanza emulates in audio form the physical movement of rising and falling of sea waves, and the sibilance of ‘snapped shut’ gives a sense of the efficiency and rapid adaptation of the Merlion towards its imminent move from the sea to the land. The consistent mixing of ‘w’ and ‘s’ sounds throughout the stanza also evokes, on the plane of the sounds of the words, a sense of the duality of the nature of the Merlion. A gentle introduction to the vast potential of Singapore at the dawn of its creation is captured in the phrase ‘morning mists’, as the dawn of Singapore is compared to the dawn of a new day. All the excitement and possibilities inherent in the idea of a new day is projected onto the idea of the young, new nation of Singapore in this stanza.

Second stanza

The second stanza is about the Merlion’s conquer of the land mass of Singapore and again, the figure of the Merlion is imbued with a mythical dimension. It ‘conquers’ the land of Singapore, like a victorious human army captain, but it also embodies history in its existence, the way only a creature with a mythical dimension could. It lives with the ‘memory of waves’ (ie. memories of where it came from, ‘its oceanic origins’). Describing this origin as inscribed in ‘runes’ gives the creature, or Singapore, a sense of rich and deep history, as runes are usually associated with mysterious, unreadable symbols of writing from ancient times. ‘Your heart thumped’ corresponds to the ‘morning mists’ from the previous stanza, because it evokes the imagery of a heart pumping strongly because of adrenaline, of excitement at the possibilities of the future. ‘animal skin drum/ heralding the coming of a prince’ brings out the juxtaposition of the primal and the royal, as if Singapore was a mix of raw power and regality at the beginning of its creation.

Third stanza

The third stanza is about the land of Singapore embracing the Merlion and softens the image of the Merlion as the forceful ‘conqueror’ of the land. The trees move protectively and welcoming around the Merlion, and the Merlion makes a regal, powerful presence on the land. Its eyes are emerald blazes, it is secure in its own sense of presence enough to ‘settle back’ on its ‘haunches’, and it is comfortable enough in its surroundings to ‘roar’, to call out.

Fourth stanza

This stanza is about the way the Merlion facilitates the beginning of life on the land of Singapore. The overall impression is that Singapore began with the birth of a wild jungle – seeds are ‘wind-blown’ and arrives in ‘crackling boats’, bringing to mind boats made out of dried natural plants or material which would ‘crackle’ as the boat moved. ‘swaddled’ and ‘spawned’ are interesting choices of verbs, bringing to mind the imagery of coddled children and the numerous eggs of frog spawn. It is as if the life in the seeds are precious and loved like human babies are, yet at the same time, they are uncontrollably abundant, numerous as frog spawn. Reciprocity and harmony of land and life (symbolized or represented by the seeds) is conveyed in the repetition of the verb ’embraced’ in the last line of the stanza.

Fifth stanza

The fifth stanza describes the growth of life on Singapore, after the sowing of seeds in the previous stanza. The strong life of the nation is conveyed by the comparison of the sea as a ‘vein’ that is ‘throbbing’, in other words, blood is flowing with powerful beats from the heart of the nation, in the form of crowds of Singapore’s signature ‘bumboats’ moving down the river. The transformation of Singapore from a land of jungle and trees into its modern picture of skyscrapers is smoothly captured in the line ‘your trees rise as skyscrapers’. A subtle but powerful image that enhances the beauty and magnificence of the skyscrapers in Singapore is captured in the description of ‘above the mirrored surface’. If you think of those paintings of a city’s skyline that is reflected on the surface of a sea, each building has two presences – one is its presence on land, the other is its reflection in the water, and on the painting (as well as real life), the reflection is glued at the bottom to the real building on land, and so the building is twice as long, has twice the presence it has, if it is ‘above a mirrored surface’.

Final three stanzas

Perhaps a reminder to the modern, fast-moving ubran metropolitan to remember its grand origins and rich historical roots. (But was Singapore actually steeped in such grand origins, or do we have a Gatsby situation of self-mythologizing a little bit too much here?!)

Personal Opinion 

While this poem is a fair go at communicating the creation of nation through the national symbol of a mythical creature, it reeks of the absorption of the white-washed version of history that the West has propagated.

The specificity to Singaporean culture and history seems to be very limited in this version of Singapore’s mythical origins as a nation. The impression it leaves with me is more of a watered down version of the mythical origins of a city in Europe.

The poem is peppered with words that 1. have a very distinct history/association of meanings in Western culture, 2. are not used in a way that endows them with a new identity, as would befit a poem about a city of such multi ethnic and cultural mix, now or back in history.

Just a few of these are ‘dappled’, ‘washed up’, ‘ivory coast’, ‘sinews of sand’, ‘heralding’, ‘squall of a beast’, ‘crackling boats’, ‘centuries’, ‘ribbed vaults’.

‘ribbed vaults’ particularly bugs me – this is a classic feature of Gothic architecture. Don’t tell me that Singapore absorbed the styles of Gothic architecture from the West back in the 16th to 18th century. If it doesn’t apply to Singapore, then don’t use it.

Trying to hold up the figure of the Merlion as the national symbol and myth of Singapore is also too much. But I will concede that the attempt has good moments – in its clever communication of the Merlion’s nature of half fish half lion in the first stanza.

The other moments of originality worth applauding in the poem is the incorporation of ‘bumboats’ in the imagery of the Singaporean sea, and the smooth linking of the ‘keris’ flung high and the sight of the Singaporean flag, of a red background and yellow stars on it.