Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Saddhu of Couva," Derek Walcott blends the personal and the spiritual, juxtaposing the profound weight of tradition and identity with the evolving reality of modernity. The poem follows the reflective thoughts of an elderly man—an Indian sage, or "saddhu"—who lives in the village of Couva in Trinidad. Through his meditative recollections, the speaker grapples with the tension between the cultural heritage of India and the changing Caribbean landscape around him, while also wrestling with the disillusionment that comes with age and the inevitable passage of time.

Walcott opens the poem with a striking image of sunset, described as a "brass gong," a resonant symbol that vibrates through the village. The sound of the gong evokes both an auditory and spiritual call, signaling the end of the day and the beginning of the speaker’s introspective journey. As the sun sets, the speaker's soul becomes "unsheathed," likened to a "white cattle bird growing more small over the ocean of the evening canes." This simile creates a poignant image of the speaker’s spirit lifting from the mundane physical world, growing distant and ethereal. The cattle bird, commonly found in the Caribbean, mirrors the speaker’s connection to the land, but its flight away from the earth hints at a longing for spiritual transcendence and an awareness of his detachment from the world he inhabits.

The speaker, however, acknowledges the impossibility of fully embracing this transcendence. He compares his spirit to a "hog-cattle blistered with mud," symbolizing how it must return to the earth, weighed down by the practical realities of life. For this "saddhu", India—his spiritual and cultural homeland—is "too far." The distance between the physical Caribbean and the spiritual India is not just geographic but existential, revealing the speaker's sense of alienation from his ancestral culture. India remains an idealized space in his mind, a spiritual refuge that is increasingly unreachable.

Walcott continues to explore this cultural tension through the imagery of the evening, as "bald clouds in saffron robes" gather, sacred not only to the speaker but also to Ramlochan, a figure who embodies a more everyday, less spiritual connection to India. Ramlochan sings "Indian hits from his jute hammock," a casual, almost trivialized version of cultural memory. His maroon taxi, described with affection, is a far cry from the spiritual journeys the speaker imagines. Even the mosquitoes "whine their evening mantras," transforming the sacred into the mundane, as the lines between the spiritual and the everyday blur in this Caribbean setting.

The speaker, in his old age, reflects on how he once found solace in the fields around him, which "sang of Bengal" and reminded him of the temples and landscapes of India. However, the encroachment of time becomes an overwhelming force: "time roars in my ears like a river," symbolizing the relentless flow of life. The speaker’s old age is described as a "conflagration as fierce as the cane fires of crop time," comparing the physical decline of aging to the violent, destructive energy of burning sugarcane fields, a frequent sight in the Caribbean. This metaphor not only captures the intensity of the speaker’s personal decay but also suggests a larger cultural and spiritual combustion, as the speaker fears that both he and his heritage are being consumed by the modern world.

As the poem progresses, the speaker contemplates his place in the village and in the world. He imagines himself "passing through these people like a cloud," an insubstantial figure who may be seen but not understood. The image of the "white bird beating the evening sea of the canes behind Couva" recurs, symbolizing the speaker's fleeting, ephemeral existence, caught between the spiritual and the worldly. He acknowledges that neither the "bridegroom in beads" nor the "bride in her veils"—symbols of cultural continuity—will point to this bird as his soul, emphasizing his estrangement from both the living and the dead.

The speaker’s voice shifts from contemplative to bitter as he recalls his role on the "Couva Village Council," where his words were "always drowned by the loudspeakers in front of the stores." This frustration at being unheard, despite his efforts, mirrors his broader disillusionment with modernity and its disregard for the wisdom of the past. The loudspeakers, with their "greatest pictures," represent the noise of contemporary life, overwhelming the quieter, reflective voices like his own.

The saddhu, feeling out of place and time, compares himself to a "white cattle bird on legs like sticks," wandering the "Path between the canes on a district road at dusk." His role as an elder, once a position of respect, has become obsolete. "There are no more elders. / Is only old people." This distinction points to a cultural shift where the wisdom of age is no longer valued, replaced by a disconnection from tradition and spirituality.

In the latter part of the poem, the speaker poses a series of speculative, almost despairing questions: "Suppose all the gods too old, / Suppose they dead and they burning them." This rhetorical questioning speaks to his fear that the spiritual world of his ancestors is dying, extinguished by modernity ("electric light") and the loss of cultural reverence. The speaker’s imagination spins out further, envisioning the cane cutters who unknowingly sever the snake-armed god Hanuman with their cutlasses, symbolizing the careless destruction of the divine in the modern world.

The poem’s closing lines are suffused with the imagery of death and cremation. The speaker ascends to his "bed of sweet sandalwood," invoking the traditional Hindu practice of cremation on sandalwood pyres. The final lines—"embers of blown swallows dart and cry, / like women distracted, / around its cremation"—evoke a sense of finality, as the speaker contemplates the end of both his life and his cultural world.

In "Saddhu of Couva," Derek Walcott masterfully portrays the inner conflict of an individual caught between two worlds—the spiritual traditions of India and the modern, evolving landscape of the Caribbean. The poem is rich in imagery and symbolism, weaving together themes of cultural dislocation, aging, and the loss of spiritual connection. Through the saddhu's reflections, Walcott captures the profound sense of isolation and disillusionment that accompanies the erosion of cultural identity in the face of modernity.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...