The gliding Shire River mystifies us watering
Our golden lives, and tantalized we then conclude
The source of the waters must be more exotic. (33)However, the import of this epigrammatic truth is to transcend its complacent veracity in
order to subject it to critical interrogation. And once this is done, an alternative truth
emerges which, though disobliging, is no less axiomatic. For
...drinking water far from the sources we often
Exalt our images heedless of the minor details:
Streams gather debris from antique sun-spots
Depositing the silt onto infinite sand-beds. (33)^42Conceding to this other less popular fact about river sources is crucial as it serves as an
analogous springboard for the poet to consider in the same way the flipsides of modernity
in Britain. The whole idea of progress that is at the centre of modernity and
modernization is not without its attractions, and like the Shire River, “mystifies” its
beneficiaries from the post-colonial nations. But the “salvation”, both secular and sacred,
it preaches through the legacy of “the dead empire”, cannot be said to be absolutely
defined by the “purity” of its flow. That is, once the source or sources of the project are
scrutinized, the not so palatable truths about empire begin to emerge, which is why for all
the progress it espouses, the propriety of giving a balanced view of the phenomenon
necessitates that one considers the other apparently “minor” but grievous “details” that
are crucially concomitant with modernity. Moreover, if Britain to the formerly colonized
is the home of modernity and modernization, then considering the logic of the argument
Mapanje concludes:
42
Perhaps one should add that Mapanje in his account on the Banda years reveals that, part of his (Banda’s)
suppression strategies was to order the arrest, binding and blind-folding of “supposed dissidents”, shoved
into bags and dumped in the Shire River. See Jack Mapanje 2001. If such revelation on the pollution to
which the Shire River is horrifying, it cannot be said to be exclusive. For Jonathan Raban makes a similar
observation about River Thames when he writes thus in Old Glory : “I went for long walks by the
Thames...the river, as it sluiced past their doorsteps, carried plenty of evidence of its deadliness. There
were dead dogs in it, and stoved-in boats, and the occasional bloated human corpse” (19). The most
important thing in this discussion, however, is how the flipsides of the worlds’ most celebrated rivers is
analogous to the flipsides associated with some of the most celebrated concepts like modernity. Though the
praises showered on these phenomena tend to overshadow the criticisms, the basis for the criticisms is as
valid and strong.