This sonnet gives a feeling of monotony and stasis which is mostly derived from its insistent metrical regularity, and the fact that all the lines are end-stopped. The octave is quite successful at giving a sense of the land’s difficult condition and the ranchers’ situation.
I find the mention of Kruggerand quite helpful in further placing the setting, which I imagine is somewhere at or close to the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Although it’s an arid desert, it is not impossibly dry like a typical desert and sustains vegetation and I suppose cultivation in several areas. The degree of aridity increases the further southwest one goes, which probably explains the attention given to West in L1 and L4.
The sextet makes such a leap from the physical to the metaphysical that it almost feels like it belongs elsewhere, as if the sonnet is suddenly possessed and undergoes an out of body experience. In a way, it’s hoping that the reader suspends disbelief and let the transcendental take over. Reconciling the apparent schism between the splitting of the senses and sense, especially for the nonbeliever, may be part of the sonnet’s devise to take it to a higher plane of understanding. My feeling is that it on that level, it succeeds.
Cheers,
…Alex
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