Deep under
No air
Water water.
Fish are the citizens
Now the rightful denizens
Who were once humans
Like you and me.
Palaces, courts, bazaars
Peaceful homes of placid populace
Thoroughfares of endless footsteps
Of an ancient date
Now lie under layered gunk
Of excremental tourist lake.
1 comment:
When I look at the poem, I see an interplay of past and present; the present standing over the past, built upon the past. The tourists come, see and go and literally (don’t) give a shit about the ‘Palaces, courts, bazaars /Peaceful homes of placid populace /Thoroughfares of endless footsteps /Of an ancient date.’ Past sometimes sparkles from deep down our memory or history to the surface of the everyday life like the deep-sea fish who remain unseen until they sheen at the unexpected exposure of light. Look at the following lines (with special attention to their syntax):
Fish are the citizens
Now the rightful denizens
Who were once humans
Like you and me.
How do you paraphrase the line? I’m showing two ways equally meaningful and valid:
1. The place where the fish are at present rightful citizens and inhabitants was once in the past inhabited by human beings like you and me.
2. The fish are the once flesh and blood human beings like you and me and they inhabit here as the rightful citizens now.
These may be two ways of saying the same thing; still, an intended vagueness of meaning is created to let the reader be bewildered about the chemistry of the present and the past. The same goes about the title of the poem: Water World; this innocent looking simple title is not that simple; in fact, simplicity is the trickery here. You can read ‘Water World’ either in a single breath or you can have a pause after ‘water’ and then pronounce ‘world’ with a difference in meaning. In a single breath, it means a huge territory constituted with water (roughly). But if you take a pause after ‘water’, you’ll get an astonishingly different effect of the sound—something like ‘Water and World’ and the meaning will accord itself with the sound; the ‘water’ and the ‘world’ will mean to be two separate territories. Indeed, they are different in the poem—‘water’ is where our past lies and the ‘world’ above is where we live at present. I may be complicating the poem a little too much more than is intended. But I choose to be complex rather than simple.
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