Give a brief account of the mood of the poet in Piano and Drums.
Confusion trails the mood of the speaker in the poem, Piano and Drums. The speaker is at the riverside in the morning and then comes the “mystic rhythms of jungle drums.” It comes like bleeding flesh, reminding him of the beginning of life. The panther is ready to pounce” the leopard is about to leap, “there is a note of urgency in the speaker’s mood here.
His blood ripples turn torrent and he recalls his suckling years on his mother’s laps. Now, walking on a simple path with no innovation, he hears a “wailing piano”. The piano is speaking of complex ways, in the tear-furrowed concerto. ‘This is from faraway lands.’ The inconclusive nature of this music is stressed in the following line “But lost in the labyrinth of its complexities it ends in the middle of a phrase at a dagger point”.
Finally, the confusion created by the clash of these two cultures can further be seen in the last stanza — “and I, lost in the morning mist… wandering in the mystic rhythm of jungle drums and the concerto”. Thus, the mood is characterized by the confusion created by the clash between Western and traditional cultures represented by the piano and drums.