Summary
In a cold winter city, a man drunk on metho cries to Nothing “to be his home and bread.”
Anguished, he wants the hammering of Time, the light like knives, and the cruel eyes of passersby to be taken from him.
Consumed by drink, he finds safety in the house of Nothing.
In the second stanza, he compares the drink to feeling like there is a “woman of fire" who sets a candle to his heart to burn away the flesh and fray the nerve.
In Nothing he lies until his bone is bared by the fiery woman.
He wakes under the “dark dead moon.” He is alone.
The man had purposefully consumed her (the metho) to find Death, but her kiss and “acid” desire still make him uneasy.
Analysis
“Metho Drinker” is an irrefutably dark poem. Its tone and subject matter are bleak, its imagery disturbing. It tells the story of a man addicted to “metho,” which is short for methylated spirits. This liquid, also referred to as denatured alcohol, is made from alcohol and other chemicals and is mostly intended for household use (as a solvent, for camping, and fuel for alcohol burners), but even though it is dangerous, noxious-tasting, and has a variety of additives that attempt to discourage its consumption as a recreational drink, it is still occasionally consumed as one by drinkers attracted to its low price and ubiquity. A safety data sheet from Australia’s Sierra Chemicals states that imbibing the liquid “can cause drunkenness or harmful central nervous system effects. The deliberate ingestion of ethanol (50-100ml) may cause inebriation such that safety is impaired. Effects of a small intake may include excitation, euphoria, headache, dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision and fatigue. Ingestion of a large amount may lead to severe acute intoxication, tremours, convulsion, loss of consciousness, coma, respiratory arrest and death.”
The subject of Wright’s poem experiences the bodily and mental harm described in the clinical definition above, but the poem makes a much more visceral impact. Patrick Buckridge lauds “Metho Drinker” and other early works for their “characteristically imperious transmutations of the ordinary social debris of the city into the hieratic symbology of fire, acid, blades, flesh, blood, bread and bones.” To wit, it is likely that the figure in “Metho Drinker” is a homeless man, for he only has “winter’s leaves” to cover him, and only the “terrible night” will be “his home and bread.” He drinks to find “Nothing,” drinks for “Death.” He seeks to stop Time from crushing him, light from stabbing him, and the pain from other people’s eyes, which “dare not touch or pity.” The “waterfall,” with its constant, unending flow parallels the putatively frequent occurrence of drunkenness for the man; he is probably a mainstay of the streets. The reader can imagine him crouched against a wall, other city dwellers passing by him and his empty bottles without a second glance or thought. Only under the influence of the drink can he “lie warm,” but that is a false warmth—it is the warmth of oblivion, of imminent death.
The man compares the drink to a “white and burning girl, his woman of fire,” which suggests an insidious love mingled with disgust and despair. Like many addicts, he does not want to drink but he has to; the “woman” is too powerful. He is conflicted about it all, knowing “It was for Death he took her,” but still feeling “uneasy under her kiss” and “winces from that acid of her desire.” She exerts a magnetic pull over him, as a woman might on a man, but there is no solace to be found in her embrace.
Wright evokes death in numerous ways. There is the image of the leaves, dry and crackling; there is fire imagery, with a candle that melts away flesh; there is the moon, cold and dead in the sky. She uses alliteration to reinforce the miasma of endless despair, writing of “the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time” and the “dead dark moon.” She personifies Death, Time, and Nothing to suggest their immutable power and the man’s diminutive, powerless state before them.
But even as Wright pens these tragic verses, she imbues them with tremendous compassion. Gregory Brian Smith writes at length about the poem, much of which is worth repeating here: “two brief stanzas of nine lines each, this unrhymed poem depicts an all too familiar unfortunate victim of addiction, not of alcohol, but the drink of the most destitute, methylated spirits. His inability to overcome his addiction is vivid… Excluded, rejected by society, and unable to recover enough human dignity, he sleeps under leaves safe in the house of Nothing’… In his despair, he lacks any salient salvation, comfort or redemption… The poem’s strong realist imagery, focus on metonymic detail, and punch line brevity seem to plead: Where is that superabundance of salvation now? Such graphic images of paradise lost offset the happy ones elsewhere in Wright’s work, and give voice to that compassionate strain in her vision that distinguishes her in her own land. The poet seems to cry that even his most basic needs are not being met, seeming to plead: Who will rescue him from his mistaken love? How could society destroy its own people? Statistics cannot explain this away; our outrage must surely demand political action.”
