Holland's Nadir
Holland's Nadir - meaning Summary
Displaced Empire in Wartime
The poem recalls a wartime visit to a Dutch submarine in Sydney Harbour and uses that small scene to evoke the collapse of a colonial power. Marines' uniforms, rescued aircraft and submarines gesture toward a diminished Netherlands: queen in exile, lost Indies, and persistent racial hierarchies. The sailors’ remaining agency—torpedoes and their half-American speech—contrasts with the speaker’s imminent return to a postwar world of newly reborn nations.
Read Complete AnalysesMen around a submarine moored in Sydney Harbour close to the end of wartime showed us below, down into their oily, mesh-lit gangway of bunks atop machines. In from the country, we weren't to know our shillings bought them cigars and thread for what remained of Holland's Glory: uniforms, odd, rescued aircraft, and a clutch of undersea boats patrolling from Fremantle. The men's country was still captive, their great Indies had seen them ousted, their slaves from centuries back were still black, and their queen was in English exile. The only ripostes still open to them were torpedoes and their throaty half- American-sounding language. Speaking a luckier one we set off home then. Home and all that word would mean in the age of rebirthing nations which would be my time.
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