A Tropic by Alamgir Hashmi: Summary & Analysis

 

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Summary & Structure

The poem unfolds in three distinct sections:

1. Sensual Encounter with Nature: A speaker describes an intimate, almost erotic interaction with a woman metaphorically depicted as a mulberry tree, culminating in tasting her fruit.

2. Disruption & Transformation: A crow's cry interrupts the moment, followed by imagery of seismic shifts (melting polar ice, explorer ships) that alter the landscape and season.

3. Ambiguous Revelation & Consumption: Light fills the sky; the source is unclear (native date-palm or introduced peach). The speaker and companion eat the fruit, attempting to "refocus time," but the final stanza reveals a lingering disconnect – the harsh sky contrasts with their dream of artificial winter (ice cream).

Key Themes & Analysis

1. Sensuality & Eroticism of Nature:

Central Metaphor: The woman is the landscape. Her arms are "supple branches," her warmth merges with the environment ("Free and warms / Swaying in the summer wind").

Intimate Interaction: The speaker's actions are tactile and sensual: holding down a branch, gathering leaves, and crucially, "tongued into ripeness." This blurs the line between consuming fruit and engaging in physical intimacy.

Embodied Landscape: Nature isn't just scenery; it's a living, feeling body experienced through touch and taste.

2. Colonial Encounter & Disruption:

The Crow's Cry: "This is not a mistletoe -toe-toe. / Peaches!" acts as a jarring interruption. It signals:

Misidentification/Imposition: The crow rejects the native context (mistletoe association) and imposes an introduced species (peaches).

Colonial Voice: The crow can be read as representing an external, disruptive perspective naming and claiming the land/fruit.

Seismic Shifts: The kiss causes the "South Pole / Ice [to] shift" and "Explorer ships [to blow] their banjo horns." This links desire/intimacy with catastrophic environmental change and the arrival of colonizers.

Seasonal Change & "Bold" Custom: "Custom had made her bold" hints at cultural norms, but the subsequent shift ("the season turned") suggests this encounter triggers irreversible change associated with external forces. The "new axis of summer" implies a fundamental, imposed reorientation.

3. Hybridity & Cultural Ambiguity:

The Ambiguous Fruit: The source of the "divine fruit" and the "plumped down" sweetness is unclear: the native "date-palm overhead" or the introduced "peach." This ambiguity reflects the blending of cultures and landscapes post-encounter.

Consuming Hybridity: "Either, we ate to refocus time." Eating the fruit, regardless of origin, is an attempt to assimilate the changed reality, to reshape their understanding of time and place through consumption. It acknowledges the new hybrid state.

4. Clash Between Natural & Artificial/Imposed:

Dream vs. Reality: The final stanza contrasts their idyllic "dream" of "tasting winter the summer way" (through ice cream – an artificial, imported concept of cold) with the harsh reality of the tropical sky "hard as hail storm."

"Imperchment of ice cream": This invented word brilliantly combines:

           Imperialism: Imposition of foreign concepts.

           Encroachment: The artificial replacing the natural.

           Perch: Something unstable or foreign (like ice cream in the tropics).

           Impertinence: The audacity of the desire.

       The ice cream symbolizes the unsustainable desire to force a foreign experience (winter) onto a tropical reality, highlighting cultural and environmental dissonance.

5. Power Dynamics & Transformation:

The interaction starts with the speaker exerting control ("I held down a branch"). However, the encounter unleashes forces (the crow, the ice shift, the explorers) far beyond his control, transforming the world and the relationship.

The "bold" custom is overcome by the external forces represented by the ships and the season turn. The power shifts.

 Literary Devices & Style:

Extended Metaphor: The woman-as-mulberry-tree is sustained throughout the first section.

Sensory Language: Vivid imagery focuses on touch ("supple," "gather," "held down"), taste ("tongued," "ripeness," "sweetness"), sight ("gold / Beaten barks," "sky had more light"), and sound (crow's cry, banjo horns).

Personification: The landscape is imbued with human qualities (boldness, kissing, pulsing). The crow speaks. Explorer ships act.

Symbolism:

Mulberry/Peach/Date-Palm: Represent native vs. introduced species, natural vs. hybrid identity.

South Pole Ice Shift: Represents global, disruptive consequences of local encounters (colonial impact).

Explorer Ships & Banjo Horns: Symbols of colonialism, intrusion, and cultural imposition.

Ice Cream: Symbol of artificiality, imported desires, and the unsustainable imposition of foreign norms.

Ambiguity: The source of the fruit and light is deliberately unclear, reflecting the poem's thematic focus on hybridity and blurred origins.

Invented Language: "Imperchment" powerfully encapsulates the core conflict of the final stanza.

Juxtaposition: Sensual intimacy vs. seismic disruption; natural tropics vs. artificial winter dream; native fruit vs. introduced fruit.

Conclusion:

"A Tropics" is a complex and evocative poem that uses a seemingly simple, sensual encounter in nature to explore profound themes of colonialism, cultural hybridity, and environmental change. Hashmi masterfully intertwines eroticism with the violence of disruption, showing how intimate interactions within a landscape can resonate on a global scale. The poem highlights the ambiguity and loss inherent in cultural encounters, the creation of hybrid identities, and the often-painful clash between natural realities and imported desires. The haunting final image of the harsh sky rejecting the dream of artificial winter underscores the enduring tension between the land's inherent nature and the transformations imposed upon it. It's a powerful meditation on place, belonging, and the irreversible consequences of contact.