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| Imaginary Night Ship |
The link to the poem didn't seem to work, so I searched the poem by myself. Please check if the following link to the peom is correct.
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The poem vividly depicts the European "passengers" on a boat journey to the Indies. Overall, the poem itself emits various of mood changes. To start off, according to some of the descriptions the author portraits such as: "...with cans of saltwater at hand nearby for threat of fire," "against the dark wood," and "the people sleep or fight to sleep or smoke the coarse-leaved tobacco," Merina evidently shows that the atmosphere on the boat could seem casual, but at the same time a little tiring. However, the first verse of the poem also represents the merchants' hope of gaining potential wealth due to "people dream of rich goods and silk and land and sea", which the author uses while describing its setting.
I was impressed with the specific details she uses to describe the products that were loaded on the boat. The whole list of goods, starting from "the untwisted silk" to "pins and boxes" foreshadows the possible riches the merchants will obtain. Also, a long description of rum--which the passengers seem to like--represents the joy of the merchants. Until here, the mood of the poem seems to brighten up.
The use of Spanish vocabulary insinuates that the merchants are Spanish. At one point, the author lists out a whole "mixture-of-race" list. Yet before that, the auther repeats the phrase "the blood". The first thing I related to the phrase was the "mixture of race." The merchants could have been thinking of marrying some of the natives in the Indies, or maybe even going on to settle there. On the other hand, "the blood" could represent possible violence the merchants might practise to "rip-off" the natives. Therefore, the list of "mixture" might be the cause of potential violence, for instance, raping.
After this point, the author illustrates a somewhat gloomy mood. The change of weather (raining) intensifies the possible outcome of the journey. However, the author stops the description at one point, and goes back to recite the first verse and end the poem.
The "open-end" conclusion left me with various of thoughts: the result of their fate, and how their destiny will meet their expectations. Although I had to look up some Spanish words throughout the reading, the English used in the poem was comparably easy to understand. True, it was a little long, and did not seem to have a poetic structure, hence I enjoyed its unique style in terms of the use of an open-end.
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