The sight of a rather feeble rainbow inspired me to write about this poem by Ravi Shankar. Just a quick warning: it does reference sadness, depression and hints at self-harm.

In ‘Double Rainbow’ how does the poet present the speaker’s attitudes towards the rainbow?

The poem can be accessed here.

In this short poem, an aimless, angry speaker seems devoid of hope, despite the natural beauty they observe.

The speaker is driving a car, ‘speeding’, although this mode of transport isn't made explicit until the second stanza when we see the ‘windshield wipers’. There is further ambiguity in this opening stanza as we don't initially know what, or who, is ‘speeding’, just as the speaker doesn't know where they're going: ‘without destination’. This sense of movement without clarity is echoed in the enjambement of these opening lines. Initially ‘after dark’ at the end of the line, seems to be a complete phrase, but the syntax of the next line shows that the whole phrase is ‘after dark/ torrents have poured’ and in fact, the continuation of this run on sentence, its pile of non-sequiturs, serve to echo the discombobulated mood of the driver.

The language of the second stanza seems violent. The ‘wipers’ are ‘knifing through sheets of rain’, the back roads are dangerous – ‘slick with rain’, and a ‘shard’ opens in the clouds (possibly a shard from that mirror in stanza one?) The final word of stanza two, ‘cutting’, refers to the engine of the car, but the way Shankar has left it hanging at the end of this line and stanza break, forces the reader to see a shard (of glass, mirror?) physically cutting something. Does this driver have violent urges? Are they considering self-harm? What are they ‘speeding’ to get away from?

When the speaker finally gets to the rainbow itself, the description is almost anti-poetic. ‘A full spectrum of colour’ sounds like a scientific description. There is no awe and wonder here. Instead, the speaker trots out a series of poetic clichés about rainbows: ‘archer’s bow, hem of the sun god’s coat, bridge between worlds’. They seem to be going through the motions. The poem appears to end on the speaker’s complete rejection of ‘reconciliation and pardon’, declaring, ‘they don't last’.

However, I do think there is a tiny nugget of the hope that rainbows usually represent in this otherwise hopeless poem. When the speaker sees the ‘shard of cloudlessness’ they do pull over. They do get out of the car (albeit still ‘fuming’) to ‘greet’ the rainbow. If all hope was lost, if there were no possibility whatsoever of ‘reconciliation’ with the world, why would the speaker have bothered? The mood of the speaker is certainly bleak, they seem near to the sharp edge of self destruction, but maybe, just maybe, this poem shows them stepping back from the brink.