At 4 o'clock cars
clutter on the highway like abacus beads.
No one dares overtake.
Sunlight scrawls
through the dust and the fumes,
and the shadows slap at the edge of the grass.
Somewhere ahead, there's been an accident.
One by one, the engines
stop, the cars slump into dusk.
You wrench yourself from the road,
sift the dark trees
for diversion.
Sub-division houses-teacups
of colour from television sets,
steam rising from ovens
and showers
like mist across a swampland. The cricket sound
of voices and cutlery.
Only the children
stay outside, bruised with dirt
and school, squeezing play
from the tattered edges of the afternoon.
In the darkness, they grow
to be heroes, clash in the park
like cars on a highway,
pound out grudges
tight as steel. At last they slacken
home forgetfully.
As the wreck is cleared, rain trembles
across the cars
and the charred, unbroken road
I've just analysed the first two stanzas to perhaps help you a little bit on your own interpretation of this poem. I hope my insight into these stanzas allows you to study the rest of the poem with a greater frame of mind.
The first stanza depicts a scene in which workers are travelling home in what seems to be quite congested traffic. The line, “Clutter on the highway like abacus beads,” portray a scene of heavy traffic, which suggests the reason why “No one dares overtake.” Perhaps the risk of causing an accident in such circumstances is too much to take to chance.
A general metaphorical interpretation which one could envision from this stanza, is perhaps the use of the road to represent the journey of life. The clutter of cars on the highway, exemplify a mood of conformity, with all the cars cluttered around the same general area. The first line in particular, “At 4 o’clock…” depicts this mood of conformity very much so; the cars represent just average people living out their lives. As we continue reading the poem, the line, “No one dares overtake,” is most important to note. In this case, the line would mean to take risks. In life, one has to take risks and be prepared to fail, in order to better themselves. These people are too concerned about the risks to consider taking them.
In the second stanza there appears to have been an accident on the road, and the traffic has evidently come to a complete stand still. As the engines all begin to stop, we once again feel this sense of conformity; they all stop. The line, “… the cars slump into dusk” shows just how long the cars had been at a standstill.
Viewing once again, this stanza, from a more representative manner, the accident may be symbolising events of distress and hardship, which are situations which humans are bound to be faced with at some time in their lives. The lines, “… the engines stop,” may be interpreted as a person’s ability to rise back up from the hard times. These people have had an “accident” and their “engines” have “stopped”. It is almost as if something has happened which has impacted so much that they go, “Nope, we’ll stop. Our engine will stop. We just give up. It’s too hard”. That kind of attitude. The final line of this stanza, “… the cars slump into dusk” begin to suggest the idea that age is fast catching up with these people. The representation of the aging process as the arrival of nightfall is most effective, with the phrase “slumped into dusk” suggesting that as these people are aging, the general well being of their lives has seemed to have diminished
