Symbolism in Melodic Trains by JOHN ASHBURY

Symbolic Elements – Melodic Trains as the drama of life

Only the wait in stations is vague and Dimensionless, like oneself.  How do they decide how much Time to spend on each?  One being to suspect there’s no
Rule or that it’s applied haphazardly.

Next, the train takes turns like a pencil and the poet experiences that life too is like a train full of complexity and running to its destination – death. As in an ordinary journey, the train stops at various stations for brief moments. We also pause at some state of life before turning into a new direction. The faces of the passengers standing outside the platforms of different stations melt into the faces of those million faces, the poet reads different expressions. Some carry on eternal sadness. Some reflect disillusionment with life and its receptive appearance; some show anxiety about the future. There are questions in every mind.  Will the taxi be available; will someone come to welcome me? These and many others perplex the mind of travelers. As the following lines show:

The sadness on the faces of children on the platform,
The concern of the grownups for connections, for the chances
Of getting a taxi, since these have no timetable.
You get one if you can find one though in principle

These questions asked in ordinary life reflect those questions in the next world. The poet contemplates some spiritual and metaphysical issues at this point. The complexities of the world symbolize those of the hereafter and regarding the future of man in the next world. The is the haphazard dimension in life which disturbs all routines and the same is to be found on the Day the Judgment when this haphazardness blends into a unique Death which rampages everything on the earth.

One of these issues is the role of chance in the course of life. Although chance is just a segment of the total certainty, chance governs a large part of our existence. The total existence of human activity is controlled by chance, which may be termed as Fate.

Chance, fate, stages of journey and chorus let us enter into the drama of life which is more visible in the following remarkable lines:

It’s as though a visible chorus called up the different
Stages of the journey, singing about them and bring them

The train journey becomes a semblance to the drama in real life. As the play has acts and chorus as the character, so is the situation here. Every man and woman along with their family members act as chorus throughout all the stages of their life – tragic or comic may be.