Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Vehicles," William Stanley Merwin offers an elegy not for people but for the wheels of various vehicles, which serve as emblems of time, memory, and the ever-changing relationships between humans and their environment. The poem embodies the ineffable sadness of impermanence, detailing the narrative of various wheels stored in a barn, each with its own tale of functional utility, decay, or abandonment.

The opening lines introduce the setting as "a place on the way after the distances / can no longer be kept straight," hinting at the disorientation of time and space. This area is an aggregate of all journeys, where "a mound of wheels has convened" to collectively narrate the passage of epochs. Described as lying "as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs," the wheels echo with historical and cultural reverberations, offering a quiet monumentality.

The wheels also possess individual stories. Some "in pairs that rolled as one over the same roads / to the end and never touched each other until they / arrived here," symbolize relationships that travel parallel paths but never truly connect until their journey ends. Others "broke by themselves and were left / until they could be repaired," perhaps signifying lives interrupted by circumstance, waiting for a renewal that may never come.

Merwin crafts an environment where these wheels "go all the way back together," transforming them into "cobweb-hung models of galaxies in their rings / of rust." This celestial imagery elevates the seemingly mundane wheels into cosmic objects, drawing a parallel between the small and the infinite. The wheels no longer are mere tools for transport; they are turned into a microcosm of the universe, bound together by their shared pasts and collective decay.

The personal touch is accentuated as the poem delves into the details of individual wheels, each named for the person who once owned or used them. We meet Rene, Merot, and bald Bleret, each one contributing a different layer of meaning. Rene's wheels are kept "because there was nobody left who could make them like that," highlighting the loss of craftsmanship and the knowledge carried down through generations. Merot believed his carriage wheels "would be worth a lot some day," expressing human hope or perhaps greed, while Bleret's old green Samson recalls a time when life was simpler, more connected to nature and agricultural rhythms.

The poem concludes with a striking image of a "black / top-hat sedan still towered outside Sandeau's cow barn," a car so luxurious it had "velvet upholstery and sconces for flowers," but which has been reduced to sheltering "two calves instead of the back seat when their time came." This serves as a powerful metaphor for the inexorable passage of time, which alters the original purposes and grandeur of all things, converting luxury to mere utility, and ultimately, to decay.

"Vehicles" is a rich and textured poem, encapsulating the complex relationship between humanity and its creations, set against the grand canvas of time and mortality. It asks us to consider what we leave behind, not just as individuals but as a species, and how those artifacts narrate our collective journey. It is a quiet lament for both the forgotten objects and the lost eras they represent, an ode to the relentless wheel of time that moves us all toward an unknown destination

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