WATERFALLS IN A BANK : Reading and Analysis

WATERFALLS IN A BANK

And then one sometimes sees waterfalls

As the ancient Tamils saw them,

Wavering snakeskins,

Cascades of muslin. Sometimes

In the spray, living and dying children

tumble towards old age,

Lovesongs, and Biafra, orchestras in bombsites,

Hunger’s saints in the glasshouse alley,

And more children,

With a bentover grandmother, black and wrinkled as a raisin, working

Between mother’s laboring

Thighs, in a corner room with steaming

Gleaming brass vats, and fur lemons,

For good omens.

As I transact with the past as with another

Country with its own customs, currency,

Stock exchange, always

At a loss when I count my change: water-

Falls of dying children, Assam

Politics,

And downtown Nairobi fall thrugh me

In Hyde Park Bank, as I rise among them,

Mud on my nose,

A rhododendron rising from a compost

Of rhododendrons, chicken bones,

Silk of girlish hair,

And the nitrogen of earthworms.

As I hear the waterfall, the papers

Rustle, and it’s evening: a paralytic sadhu,

Tapdancer of the St.Vitus’s dance,

Knocking his steps ut on the pebbles

With n reflexes left in either knee,

Lifts with his one good finger

His loincloth, and pisses standing

Like a horse on my childhood’s dark

Sidestreet, aiming his stream

At two red flowers on the oleander bush,

As a car turns the corner.

Headlights make his arc

A trajectory of yellow diamonds,

Scared instant rainbows, ejecting spurts

Of crystal, shocked

By the commonplace cruelty of headlights.

January here: a seven-day snowfall

Covers Chicago, clogs the traffic,

Grounds the planes;

Muffles screams, garbage cans, pianos;

Topples a mayor and elects another

Who promises clearance

Of debts and snowfalls with their silent

White effects, tickertape on astronauts,

White flower n black thorn.

And my watchers watch, from their nowhere perches.

POEM SUMMARY

Stanzas 1-5

"Waterfalls in a Bank" is set in a bank in Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois. The poet has been in the bank a while before the poem begins, and the first line, "And then one sometimes sees waterfalls," suggests that his glance has just fallen on some kind of decorative waterfall that has been installed in the lobby. As he looks at the waterfall, he starts to see it metaphorically, influenced by his knowledge of Tamil poetry (Tamil is an ancient language in India), as "wavering snakeskins" and "cascades of muslin." Muslin is a fine, thin cotton cloth, also called India muslin. For centuries, muslin was made by hand in India, but during British colonial rule, the muslin industry was deliberately destroyed by the British in order to supplant it with imported British goods. In other words, the poet is here allowing images from the culture of his native India to flood into his mind as he observes the waterfall. This creates an immediate contrast, not only between present and past but also between cultures, East and West.

More images follow as the poet continues to gaze at the waterfall. Perhaps produced by the downward flow of the water, the images that come into his mind now are of "living and dying children" who "tumble towards old age." Then, further, the waterfall creates contradictory impressions in his mind of love ("lovesongs") and war ("Biafra"). Biafra is a region in southeast Nigeria, in Africa, that was the scene of war and famine in the 1960s. In 1967, Biafra declared itself an independent state, and a three-year civil war followed. Up to a million people, including many children, died as a result of famine.

These two words, "lovesongs" and "Biafra," with their opposite connotations, seem to combine to produce the image that immediately follows, which unifies music and war: "orchestras in bombsites." It appears that the poet's mind, stimulated by the sight of the waterfall, is now engaged in a kind of free association of images. The next image is of "hunger's saints in the glasshouse alley," which could suggest both the sadhu, the begging saint in Indian tradition, seeking alms from passers-by, perhaps the Biafran children who starved during the civil war, and perhaps also, the homeless people in Chicago, begging in the "glasshouse alley" of Chicago's massive skyscrapers.

After the image of the children reappears, it is followed by a more extensive image, taking up six lines, which will conclude the first section of the poem. The image appears to go back to the poet's native India, perhaps to his own family. It is of an old woman ("grandmother") acting as midwife as her daughter—perhaps the poet's mother—who is in childbirth. The scene appears to be a home rather than a hospital, perhaps in a village rather than a city, where old folk beliefs still linger, as evidenced by the four lemons that are placed there to provide "good omens"; in other words, to produce good luck at a birth.

Stanzas 6-10

The stream of images stimulated by the waterfall now ended, the poet reflects, using images that suggest the financial institution in which he finds himself. Using the language of commerce, he speaks of himself "transact[ing] with the past," and he is aware of the wide gap, both in time and culture, between the present and the past. The past is like "another / country with its own customs, currency, / stock exchange." Continuing the financial metaphor, he states that he is always "at a loss when I count my change." At a loss can mean that he does not understand what is happening; it can also mean that in the transaction between past and present, which includes an interchange between two extremely different cultures, he has come off the loser in the deal. Perhaps change in this instance is a pun, referring to both coin and the cultural changes wrought over time to the poet's country. Perhaps he means that what he possesses in the present is less than he had in the past, or that the attempt to bridge two cultures is in some sense unsatisfactory or confusing.

The poet then returns to more images from the past, including one that had earlier been stimulated by the waterfall ("dying children") and two new ones: "Assam politics" (Assam is a northeastern state of India, south of the eastern Himalayas), and "downtown Nairobi." Since Nairobi is the capital of Nigeria, this reference recalls the mention of Biafra in the previous section.

These images "fall through" the poet as he "rise[s]" among them, and they leave him with "mud on my nose," an earthy image that seems to summon in the poet's mind a flurry of apparently unrelated images of earth, growth, regeneration, and death in plant, animal and human kingdoms:

a rhododendron rising from a compost

of rhododendrons, chicken bones,

silk of girlish hair,

and the nitrogen of earthworms.

The final image in these lines is a reference to the fact that the secretions of earthworms contain nitrogen, a nutrient essential for plant growth.

Stanzas 11-16

The poet returns once again to the waterfall, this time hearing rather than seeing the water fall. He also hears the "papers rustle"—perhaps some activity going on near him in the bank—and then he is transported once again by the waterfall, this time back to an incident he remembers from his childhood in India. An old, almost paralytic "sadhu" (a wandering ascetic holy man), is hobbling along the pebbled sidestreet near the poet's childhood home. Then with one finger he lifts his loincloth and urinates, aiming the stream of urine at two red flowers on an oleander bush. At that moment, a car turns the corner, and caught in the beam of the headlights, the arc of the urine stream appears, in three successive metaphors, transformed into "yellow diamonds," "instant rainbows" (which for some reason are "scared") and "spurts of crystal." This effect is produced, paradoxically, by the "commonplace cruelty of headlights," which illuminate in a stark but transformative way an act which should be private.

Stanzas 17-20

The final section of the poem moves further afield in its setting. Instead of a waterfall inside a Chicago bank, it considers Chicago itself. Whereas much of the poem up to this point has been looking backwards, to the past in a different culture, this section takes place in the present. There has been a "seven-day snowfall" in Chicago, which has produced chaos, clogging traffic and grounding planes as well as sundry other effects; it "muffles screams, garbage cans, pianos." This is a reference to the blizzard that hit Chicago in January 1979. The storm did not actually last seven days. It started on Friday night, January 12, and lasted until 2 a.m. Sunday January 14. On top of 7-10 inches of snow that remained on the ground following a New Year's Eve blizzard, 20.3 inches of new snow fell. This set a record in Chicago for total snow on the ground. It did indeed cause the chaos the poem describes. Transportation, including buses, trains, and cars, came to a halt for several days. Garbage piled up in the streets.

The poet states that the storm "topples a mayor and elects another / who promises clearance / of debts and snowfalls." This is a reference to the dissatisfaction among Chicago residents about the perceived slowness of Mayor Anthony Bilandic and the city in dealing with the blizzard. This dissatisfaction played a large role in the defeat of the mayor in the mayoral election on February 27, 1979. The victorious candidate, Jane Byrne, who previously had been given little chance of winning, made up much ground by exploiting the perceived ineffectiveness of Bilandic.

The reference to recent events in Chicago is followed by two images suggestive of the "silent / white effects" of falling snow: "tickertape on astronauts" (a reference to the practice in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s of giving tickertape parades for returning astronauts) and "white flower on black thorn."

The last line of the poem, "And my watchers watch, from their nowhere perches," is enigmatic and perhaps can be explained only with reference to other poems by Ramanujan. It suggests that, in spite of all the activity of his mind that he has recorded in the poem, another part of himself (his "watchers")—perhaps a deeper level of his own mind that is not so localized in time and space ("nowhere perches")—simply observes the scene, undisturbed by the musings that have both stimulated and troubled him.

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Notes prepared from reading of the text and Internet Sites.