A recent train trip involving some keen reading of Dylan Thomas; (for those of you who don't know, the poet behind the famous lines from Interstellar, "Do not go gently into that good night, rage, rage, against the dying of the light.") has led to the following poem.

The idea behind this piece is to capture a sense of delusion we all limit ourselves to, as a collective people. The delusion that most likely starts as an escape from a harsher reality, but turns into a place of shallow comfort, moving beyond which becomes a task insurmountable.

The piece aims to capture the discombobulated certainty, that comes from a realistic manifestation of the 'ignorance is bliss' idea, when it is pushed to the very extremes. A sense of harrowing which lies buried and unknown under one's psyche as far as the delusion exists.

Delusion
Rowing, rowing forward we go
Riding the shallow ebb n flow.
And there across the visible shore
We see the dingy forest floor

The daunting trees with fearful tril
And a canopy casting overshadow.
Some voices we can hear, unknown.
Growing louder, so still we row

The Voices speak of glorious hills
But being outside of comfort's shores
We stay away inside our doors
And keep ourselves to our own thrills.

For, "this, our shallow ebb and flow"
"Is glory enough on its own"
"Here shall we merrily elope"
"And hang our sorrows with the rope"

"This is, our own watery hill"
"To view the world, a tinted sill"
"With whitened frames and woe begone"
"Just here, shall we see our new dawn"

Rowing, rowing forward we go
Deeper into the ocean floor
Without a boat or even an oar
The Voices are now silent and sore.

5.38 p.m.
Friday, 7th July, 2023

~ Aarya Gandre