Blessing
Imitiaz Dharker
“The skin cracks like a pod.
There never is enough water.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Pod - Part of a plant that contains seeds, used to signify new life.
Municipal - Owned or controlled by the council or local government of a town.
Congregation - A gathering of people, usually used for religious purposes.
Blessing - A positive action that occurs as a result of a God or powerful figure’s
approval or attention.
STORY/SUMMARY
Stanza 1: We’re told that skin cracks from lack of water, this may refer to the skin of
the Earth (which cracks in dry times) or human skin.
Stanza 2: The speaker commands us to imagine water dripping, she interprets this
sound as the voice of a kind god.
Stanza 3: She explains that sometimes when a pipe bursts, water rushes out and
people excitedly gather to collect it.
Stanza 4: Finally, children also gather around the pipe and bathe in the water, which is
considered a blessing.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker uses a third person omniscient narrative voice to tell the story, so the
effect is filmic (we imagine it playing out like a film in front of us). This also provides
, a distanced perspective, where we can observe the people who gather round the
water without feeling too intimately connected to them - this demonstrates that it’s a
general situation being described, and that this type of reaction to water is common
across countries where drought or abject poverty occur.
LANGUAGE
● Imperative verb - ‘Imagine the drip of it’ - the speaker directly commands us to
picture a steady drip of water in our minds, in order to create empathy with the
characters in her poem - as the poem is written in English, likely her audience
will be from an educated first world country and it will at first be difficult for
them to understand how it feels to not have enough water, as in more
developed countries we take it for granted.
● Sibilance - ‘small splash’ ‘sometimes the sudden rush’ - the poet uses repeated
‘s’ sounds to imitate the rushing flow of water and to help us to imagine its
sound as it drips, trickles, pours and gushes.
● Metaphor - ‘silver crashes to the ground’ - water is described as ‘silver’,
suggesting how it glitters and shines in the sunlight but also the connotations of
silver being precious, rare and expensive. This contrasts to many Westerners’
attitudes to water - as we may feel that it’s a basic and almost unnoticed aspect
to our lives.
● Asyndetic Listing - ‘pots, / brass, copper, aluminium, / plastic buckets, / frantic
hands,’ - the asyndetic listing here, combined with enjambment (structure/form
point) over several lines, gives a sense that as the water overflows, life also
spills out around it - people emerge from their houses with many different
implements to collect and cherish the water, finally even using their ‘frantic
hands’ (a kind of synecdoche that suggests the frantic panic of the people
themselves).
● Imagery - the poem is replete with both visual and auditory imagery: we can
hear the sound of the water via phrases such as ‘small splash, echo / in a tin
mug’ with its fricative (s/sh) and plosive consonant sounds (p/ch/t/g). We also
see images clearly, such as the ‘naked children / screaming in the liquid sun’,
which could imply the suitleffering the children usually go through in their
Imitiaz Dharker
“The skin cracks like a pod.
There never is enough water.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Pod - Part of a plant that contains seeds, used to signify new life.
Municipal - Owned or controlled by the council or local government of a town.
Congregation - A gathering of people, usually used for religious purposes.
Blessing - A positive action that occurs as a result of a God or powerful figure’s
approval or attention.
STORY/SUMMARY
Stanza 1: We’re told that skin cracks from lack of water, this may refer to the skin of
the Earth (which cracks in dry times) or human skin.
Stanza 2: The speaker commands us to imagine water dripping, she interprets this
sound as the voice of a kind god.
Stanza 3: She explains that sometimes when a pipe bursts, water rushes out and
people excitedly gather to collect it.
Stanza 4: Finally, children also gather around the pipe and bathe in the water, which is
considered a blessing.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker uses a third person omniscient narrative voice to tell the story, so the
effect is filmic (we imagine it playing out like a film in front of us). This also provides
, a distanced perspective, where we can observe the people who gather round the
water without feeling too intimately connected to them - this demonstrates that it’s a
general situation being described, and that this type of reaction to water is common
across countries where drought or abject poverty occur.
LANGUAGE
● Imperative verb - ‘Imagine the drip of it’ - the speaker directly commands us to
picture a steady drip of water in our minds, in order to create empathy with the
characters in her poem - as the poem is written in English, likely her audience
will be from an educated first world country and it will at first be difficult for
them to understand how it feels to not have enough water, as in more
developed countries we take it for granted.
● Sibilance - ‘small splash’ ‘sometimes the sudden rush’ - the poet uses repeated
‘s’ sounds to imitate the rushing flow of water and to help us to imagine its
sound as it drips, trickles, pours and gushes.
● Metaphor - ‘silver crashes to the ground’ - water is described as ‘silver’,
suggesting how it glitters and shines in the sunlight but also the connotations of
silver being precious, rare and expensive. This contrasts to many Westerners’
attitudes to water - as we may feel that it’s a basic and almost unnoticed aspect
to our lives.
● Asyndetic Listing - ‘pots, / brass, copper, aluminium, / plastic buckets, / frantic
hands,’ - the asyndetic listing here, combined with enjambment (structure/form
point) over several lines, gives a sense that as the water overflows, life also
spills out around it - people emerge from their houses with many different
implements to collect and cherish the water, finally even using their ‘frantic
hands’ (a kind of synecdoche that suggests the frantic panic of the people
themselves).
● Imagery - the poem is replete with both visual and auditory imagery: we can
hear the sound of the water via phrases such as ‘small splash, echo / in a tin
mug’ with its fricative (s/sh) and plosive consonant sounds (p/ch/t/g). We also
see images clearly, such as the ‘naked children / screaming in the liquid sun’,
which could imply the suitleffering the children usually go through in their
