Whitewashed
The soul has sailed yet still the flesh is beached,
Spilling onto the shoals of a dying reef,
Where corals wail for every polyp bleached,
Warming the hoary sea with childish grief.
Sargassum leaves are worn as camouflage,
To hide the pallid shame of colours lost
From angelfish whose fever-hued barrage
Screams how much conformity will cost.
And yet, from cities white with rooted rock,
A shallow body may reveal its skin,
And blush a beauteous crimson when all mock
A pride that never needed to be sin.
Then may the body rise, blood-buoyed, to greet
Their incandescent soul on heaven’s fleet.
Let’s play “Choose Your Interpretation Of This Poem”:
1. Pride: a word directly referenced in the poem, pride, with its resistance to putting ourselves into situations that may cause us shame, can force us to withhold our true self for far too long at the cost of being inexperienced, bland, and unable to experience the richness and colour of life until we release ourselves from its thrall. The volta suggests the same course of action for this and most of the following interpretations: accept and reveal your true self in all its colour and trust that the world will accept you, then will your pride be not born out of fear of what you lose but made healthy through being proud of your true self. Likewise applying to most interpretations, the last couplet reveals the same result from following the advice of the volta: enlightenment.
2. Political: an analogy for the “white washing” of culture, i.e. removing the richness of different cultures in favour of culture of European origin. The second quatrain suggests that “white shame” can also be too prevalent and an unnecessary counter reaction, for any society too focussed on race, even in the service of correction, is bound to invoke further prejudice and division. Here the angelfish provides the example of a healthy individual in a society: wearing colours so strange and unique that they can only come from their personality; transcending race and taking from culture only what their personal inclination demands.
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Spilling onto the shoals of a dying reef,
Where corals wail for every polyp bleached,
Warming the hoary sea with childish grief.
Sargassum leaves are worn as camouflage,
To hide the pallid shame of colours lost
From angelfish whose fever-hued barrage
Screams how much conformity will cost.
And yet, from cities white with rooted rock,
A shallow body may reveal its skin,
And blush a beauteous crimson when all mock
A pride that never needed to be sin.
Then may the body rise, blood-buoyed, to greet
Their incandescent soul on heaven’s fleet.
Let’s play “Choose Your Interpretation Of This Poem”:
1. Pride: a word directly referenced in the poem, pride, with its resistance to putting ourselves into situations that may cause us shame, can force us to withhold our true self for far too long at the cost of being inexperienced, bland, and unable to experience the richness and colour of life until we release ourselves from its thrall. The volta suggests the same course of action for this and most of the following interpretations: accept and reveal your true self in all its colour and trust that the world will accept you, then will your pride be not born out of fear of what you lose but made healthy through being proud of your true self. Likewise applying to most interpretations, the last couplet reveals the same result from following the advice of the volta: enlightenment.
2. Political: an analogy for the “white washing” of culture, i.e. removing the richness of different cultures in favour of culture of European origin. The second quatrain suggests that “white shame” can also be too prevalent and an unnecessary counter reaction, for any society too focussed on race, even in the service of correction, is bound to invoke further prejudice and division. Here the angelfish provides the example of a healthy individual in a society: wearing colours so strange and unique that they can only come from their personality; transcending race and taking from culture only what their personal inclination demands.
...