Report to Wordsworth – Boey Kim Cheng Essay Example

to be free.

Also, ‘Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale’. The water is so polluted that gods come out like beached whales. This also shows how we have killed the gods. How they don’t have a say anymore because we have gone so far in damaging the world around us we don’t stop to look at what is happening. Cheng says ‘while insatiate man moves in for the kill’. This shows how ruthless man has become in his quest to attain more and more he grows ignorant of all the damage he has caused.

The references to “poetry and piety” and how they have begun to fail symbolizes culture, how poets have always been life givers and piety is about appreciating Gods gifts to mankind, it can also be interpreted as poetry failing because there is nothing left to write about because everything has been destroyed. The fact that he uses juxtaposition to draw a parallel between the two tells us about how we have lost touch with both. The last line is a Biblical reference, when Jesus was uttering to labor his last cry on the cross. This is important because he uses religion to build closeness to the poem and the reader.