The Deccan
 

The Deccan*

I wouldn’t mind going to bed if, instead
of sleeping the sleep of the dead, I could drowse
to the hum of a long-playing thought and be roused
from gaps between tracks by a click, never dread
the blare of a seven-a.m. resurrection,
which is why, if the night lies ahead of me, it’s
a side upper berth that’s the ticket to bliss,
in a rickety sleeper car crossing the Deccan.
Sliding the aisle curtain shut, I would take
a fetal position, interred in my berth,
and rock in the many-armed, interconnecting
embraces of dreams half-asleep, half-awake,
while a juddering mantra of death and rebirth
is chanted in clacks on the tracks of the Deccan.


* Rhymes with “reckon.” A vast triangular Indian plateau south of the Gangetic plains, between the coastal mountain ranges of the Western and Eastern Ghats.

Ah, Carl. To sleep, perhaps to travel by train through a vast triangular Indian plateau south of the Gangetic plains.

You have the railway rhythm exactly, I think. (Not that it's ever quite exact itself.)

The return of Deccan in the last line is also extremely satisfying. And I love the three rhymes in one and a half lines at the start. They're like the clunking out of the station before the train gets into its groove.

Even "lines" have (should that be "has"?) a double meaning here!

I like it a lot.

Cheers

David

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Woah Carl! Such sonics. Such exoticism. If I could I'd book it today. There's so much good in this but I'll have to come back when I've got the time. Your vivid description of being rocked and jostled in half-in and half out of sleep, experiencing a full dream state is a Kubla Kahn vision; sleep steeped in rich dreams, all while the landscape of the Deccan passes by in darkness. That's a powerful vision.

I wasn't aware of the geological wonder of the Deccan. Thanks for that. I look forward to hearing how others see this, and how you envisioned it. I've only read it once and have already felt so much in it. Great stuff!

And yes to everything David had to say.


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Coming back to say Kubla Kahn is a bit of a stretch. And I certainly wasn't implying any opium state! Yours is simply a train-induced half-dreaming half-awake state. Just my usual free-thought without borders.



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Thanks, David. The railway rhythm was something I was going for, and I’m delighted you felt it. In fact, I heard the train sound in the word “Deccan” itself and thought I’d use it a lot more than I did, but something else happened.

Thanks so much, Jim. I can’t think of a better compliment than your readiness to book.

As for how I envisioned it:

I’m a good sleeper, but don’t like going to bed, and the reason, at least on the surface, is that I think it’s going to be boring. I used to keep talk radio on during the night. Now I take my phone to bed and have YouTube talk me to sleep or else take some pet thought with me and let it loop in my head till I drop off. I did that a lot with this poem, in fact. It really is a kind of bliss for me when the drowsy, daydreamy state is prolonged and renewed by the motion of a vehicle, and that long, long train ride across the Deccan a few years ago was the ne plus ultra. That’s the idea that got me going, but then it started turning into a contrast between the belief of some Christians that the dead sleep until the Resurrection and the Hindu scenario of recurring death and rebirth.

All power to free thought without borders!

Carl,
This is lovely.
After reading David's comment I went back for a 2nd read... I hadn't fully appreciated the train rhythm first time around, but, yes indeed, the clickety, clickety, clickety clack is perfect for this poem, and it never waivers.

Never having heard of the Deccan, I was grateful for your note at the end. I don't mind having to Google something unfamiliar, but it was nice not having to bother!

I did wonder about the coupling of "berth" and "re-birth", but not enough to trouble me... though I found myself momentarily trying to concoct rhymes like breath/death instead, if you happened to switch while a juddering mantra of death and rebirth to "while a juddering mantra of rebirth and death", as the berth had already been mentioned in L7. It's not a big deal though.

The internal rhymes are excellent (and as for the blare of a seven-a.m. resurrection, I can relate to that as I have one every day) - and I dread them too!! :)

Jayne

Thank you, Jayne. I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

I guess you’re uneasy about the identity rhyme. I know that some consider it a poor rhyme (though it’s also called “rich”!), but it’s not something I’m sensitive to as long as the words are different. For me, I think the distance between the rhyming words helps too. Your alternative could work, except that I’d rather not start varying the meter in the final leg of the journey.

Yes, I enjoyed the rhythm as well, Carl, which really only fully blossoms when one reads the poem aloud. I always read aloud, and so I appreciate the intimacy of my voice and your poem.

The exoticism of the titular word, Deccan, does seem to come out of nowhere. Mightn't the poem, in some subtle way, reflect the landscape it is passing through? I think it would greatly enrich the poem as a whole. As it stands, it seems almost a metrical exercise—but if the landscape were drawn into it, the form and the content might meld more mysteriously, might pleasantly dissolve the reader's focus from the parts to the whole. As it stands now, the train could be passing through anywhere. I sense that the setting is mesmeric for you, and wish that you could translate that mesmerism more fully for the reader. Even though the poem closes our eyes and rocks us to sleep, what is hidden from vision is part of what makes that rocking sleep so rich. Deccan still seems but a word here, not a place.

Nemo

Thanks, Nemo. Your criticism is on target. I did think about reflecting the landscape, but a couple things stopped me. First, I don’t remember much of it, because it was night and I was drowsing. Second, the poem quite unexpectedly started falling into the shape of a Petrarchan sonnet, which didn’t leave much room. “Many-armed” tries to hint at the statues of Hindu gods in ubiquitous shrines, but that isn’t enough. I’m not sure I can open this poem up to what you suggest, but I’ll think on it, and it’s advice well taken for the future.

Yes, I thought it might be a bit difficult to open it up after-the-fact. But I should point out that your being stopped by the desire to keep it a Petrarchan sonnet only emphasizes the fact that it is the words that rule here, and not the poem beyond the words. That tyranny of the form has become, for me, a pitfall of formalism. I guess I am more into a veteran formalism, one that wants the form to vanish into the poem (no matter how prominent it may have loomed during composition). And the idea of a landscape cloaked in darkness, both the literal dark and the more figurative dark of fading memory, is exactly the extra touch that would make this poem come alive on the page to more than just my verbal ear.

Nemo

Beautifully put, Nemo. I agree that a sense of the outside would benefit this poem, and it doesn’t, of course, have to be a Petrarchan sonnet. I didn’t set out to write one, but the rhymes started falling into place, and the size helped me concentrate. I certainly don’t want to write metrical exercises, but neither do I want my form vanishing into the poem, though I’ve realized that many here consider it a sign of high flying. I like my form palpable. Best, of course, if it’s expressive of the content, as I hope the anapests are here. Thanks again, Nemo. Much to think about as I drowse off tonight.

I just ran across a wonderfully apt quote from 1908. T. E. Hulme, an early theorist of modernism, is arguing against just what I was trying to do in this poem:

“The effect of rhythm, like that of music, is to produce a kind of hypnotic state, during which suggestions of grief or ecstasy are easily and powerfully effective, just as when we are drunk all jokes seem funny. This is for the art of chanting, but the procedure of the new visual art is just the contrary. It depends for its effect not on a kind of half sleep produced, but on arresting the attention, so much so that the succession of visual images should exhaust one. Regular metre to this impressionist poetry is cramping, jangling, meaningless, and out of place.”

An even apter quote from Yeats:

“The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake.”

Carl, I think the reason Nemo compared this poem to a metrical exercise is that you make the rhythm too regular. Hypnotic is not what a poem should be. Instead, it should be musical. When writing anapestic verse, you need to throw some pauses and some iambs into the mix so that you don't rock the reader to sleep, too. I notice that you put a few iambs at the start of lines, but you would be surprised at how many iambs you can put into anapestic verse and still have it feel anapestic. The trick is to put the iambs into different locations in successive lines, so that the reader can't predict the pattern. I like the idea of this poem, and much of the language, but the rhythm bores me.

Susan

Thanks, Susan. I’ve set out on several occasions to do loose anapestic, but only pulled it off once. I always surrender eventually to the regular undertow and find it easier to go with the flow. It would do me good to work more on resisting that pull, so your advice is well taken, but in this case I did want to rock and lull the reader, to chant the clacks. I personally get off on poems with a mesmerizing beat (“The Destruction of Sennacherib,” for one), but I certainly didn’t want to bore anyone, so I may have gone too far …

Make mine a vote for Mesmer and a mouthful of lotus.

I well remember the pleasant stupor train travel can induce.

Unlike Susan I feel that you have enough variation to mimic the irregularities attendant on a subtly decaying transport system.

I appreciate your support for Herr Doktor Mesmer, Jan. He’s not held in high regard these days, but a “pleasant stupor” is just the effect I would have hoped for.