The River’s Story
I remember when life was good.
I tumbled down mountains,
Shilly-shallied across meadows,
I laughed and gurgled through woods,
Stretched and yawned in a myriad of floods.
Insects, weightless as sunbeams,
Settled on my skin to drink.
I wore lily-pads like medals.
Fish, lazy and battle-scarred,
Gossiped beneath them.
The damselflies were my ballerinas,
The pike my ambassadors.
Kingfishers, disguised as rainbows,
Were my secret agents.
It was a sweet time, a gone-time,
A time before factories grew,
Brick by greedy brick,
And left me cowering in monstrous shadows.
Like drunken giants
They vomited their poisons into me.
Tonight a scattering of vagrant bluebells,
Dwarfed by those same poisons,
Toll my ending.
Children, come find me if you wish,
I am your inheritance.
Behind derelict housing-estates
You will discover my remnants,
Clogged with garbage and junk
To an open sewer I’ve shrunk.
I, who have flowed through history,
Who have seen hamlets become villages,
Villages become towns, towns become cities,
Am reduced to a trickle of filth
Beneath the still, burning stars.
- Take note of the use of Dramatic Monologue in this poem. This poetic form gives voice to a character which is in this case, the unnamed river itself. This device renders the reader part of the audience who is listening to the tragically intimate and utterly avoidable tale of the river’s deterioration. If the dramatic monologue is granted to the river, then of course this privileges the use of personification which again gives the reader the opportunity to read and ‘hear’ the tragic decline of the ‘character’ speaking; from the time of idyllic pastoral harmony to the abject horror of the polluted, ruined river at the end. This deterioration is encapsulated by the reference to the almost disassociated, ‘trickle of filth’ which underlines how ‘other’ to itself the river has become. Ironically, we recognise the poet’s moral duty as a human is to resurrect the voice of the terminally ill river through his creation of the poem. Thus the poem travels from the playful voice at the beginning, to the voiceless, joylessness, finally witnessed by the angry, utterly ashamed light of the ‘burning’ stars.
- The poem begins with the speaker(the river) recollecting a ‘good’ time in the past when the river’s vitality and the unpolluted condition is celebrated: ‘I tumbled down mountains’. Such carefree, nostalgia for better days celebrates the harmony of nature and the communities fostered too. ‘Insects, weightless as sunbeams.’ Here, the most fragile and apparently negligible creatures are acknowledged for their transient but undeniable beauty. The community embrace difference in a sustaining and seemingly democratic manner: ‘The pike my ambassadors.’ Natural predators are accepted because this was a ‘sweet time.’ Like Wordsworth’s poetry, we gain a sense of the power of the past. The innocence and playfulness of the unsullied river are vividly explored and expressed. We realise that this story resembles an elegy as it is giving representation to what has been ruined and therefore must be mourned
- Thus the Volta, ‘a gone time’ sorrowfully acknowledges the destruction of this halcyon time of innocence and fertility. The oxymoronic combination of ‘factories grew’ identifies the dis-ease of such malignant growth. For the expansion of industry with the corresponding pollutants being ‘vomited’ into the vulnerable river, presage the beginning of the end for the river and all the thriving life that once made the river home. The care that the poet had taken to show all the different lives dwelling in the river makes this senseless violation profoundly disturbing: ‘my remnants clogged with garbage and junk.’ The arterial flow of the river is hampered by human waste. Like a heart, this clogging can only augur a lingering and inevitable death. The almost obscenely clumsy rhyme, ‘junk/shrunk’ accentuates the violence inflicted on the river, drawing attention to the indignity visited upon the once ‘sweet time’ when the unpolluted river ‘shilly-sallied across meadows’ with innocent freedom.
- The final stanza of the poem allows the river to speak perhaps for a last ‘I, who have flowed through history.’ This announcement is drenched in pathos as we realise that the voice is no longer acknowledged and the diminishment of the once happy river who ‘laughed and gurgled’ to the choked, barely discernible flow of the ‘trickle of filth’ is almost too unbearable to witness. Hence the shift away to a distant perspective involving the ‘burning stars’ whose anger is palpable and full of shame at such human neglect and folly. Note that I ascribe the ‘burning’ to the stars’ emotional outlook on the situation, as the dominant technique in the poem is personification, and the shift of perspective at the close of the poem seems to suggest the river has finally succumbed to death and only the stars seem prepared to bear witness.
- Of course, the poem itself, written by a human ironically suggests that art can give voice to that which can no longer(if ever) speak for itself. The extra irony is that the river does not directly blame the human world for its suffering but instead utilises fairy tale-like personification so that the factory towers are figuratively described as being ‘like drunken giants’; suggesting they are nightmarish, out of control predators, unable to protect the river from the effects of their ‘monstrous shadows’ which foreshadow death and destruction for the once pastoral idyll we encountered at the beginning of the poem. We are shown the horror of human greed through personification ’brick by greedy brick’ and left to make up our own minds as by the close of the poem, we feel we have lost an irreplaceable friend with such a distinctive voice.
