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The poet narrates the entire poem from the perspective of a person who is flying in a jet. The poet views the entire earth below from an aerial view and makes a few observations. It is generally difficult to comment or understand a particular problem with a viewpoint that is stuck in the same place. This is the reason why one must take a view from a third person's angle and have a detached perspective. The poet applies the same theory as he moves away from the land which is filled with people and is bustling with activities and looks at it from the top most position from a jet.
A flying jet
The jet springs up into the sky as it takes off slowly from the land. He slowly moves away from the bustling life on earth to a calm and quiet space. He looks down from the jet to see the city below him. He looks at the way it has been laid out and says that he understands why the cities have been laid out in a disoriented way, without sticking to a perfect plan. He understands that people give priority to their comfort and set boundaries more, compared to establishing perfection. The houses are put together in an unplanned manner which explains that there are a lot of people on earth whose primary focus is to survive and get access to basic essentials like food and shelter. The poet also clearly states that the city has developed just the way it is supposed to be. The people who wonder on the disarrangement of the plan of the city would understand the logic if they choose to just watch it from a different angle.
The earth as seen from an aerial view
The poet says that it seemed that it was inevitable for the cities to be planned in a different way from the way it is put up right now. What seemed to be a strange, unplanned way to design the city seemed to make complete sense when viewed from a few inches away from the ground. The city seemed to be styled and planned in the right way by the creator, for the creations to live a life that would be logical and unperturbed.
The poet sees that the cities are unorganised and lacks plan even from a slight distance away from the earth. He had only been away for a few meters to realise the disarrangement. The jet that he is in, takes off to an even more higher level on to the sky and he makes various other realisations.
He looks below from the jet as soon as he reaches ten thousand feet. The fact that he can still see the cities and rivers in spite of being so far away from the earth shows the beauty of creation. He finds cities, forests, water bodies, etc., and not humans. This also goes on to show that human beings are only a dot in the universe and do not have any significance outside the borders. He says that he now understands why the country had cities where rivers ran across them. He says that the entire world was once an undeveloped place. People later started setting across various places and making them adaptable. When choosing such a place as their abode, they would naturally choose places that have a source of water. Water is the most essential of all basic amenities. People generally tend to make a dwelling in a place where water is available so that they can drink, cook or bathe.
People near water bodies
The poet also says that the river valleys were the ones that were highly populated, as he can see from above that it is a place where people could live comfortably without having to walk for miles together in search of water. If people had chosen to live in a desert region, they would have to starve and suffer due to lack of water. The logic that people were attracted to land and water is revealed when he sees the earth from ten thousand feet high.
River valley
The poet discovers new facts and unravels a few mysteries as the jet rises higher and higher. It shows that the more one detaches himself from the materialistic world, the more he is prone to understand the higher realities of life and the beauty of creation. The jet moves from ten thousand feet to six miles away from the land. This makes the poet confirm on the most interesting fact that exists on the earth's shape. When he looks below at the earth, he realises that it is true that the earth is round. The earlier men believed that earth was a flat planet. But it was later proved that it was round and one might not fall down the end of the earth when one is on a ship voyage.
Earth is round
The second thing that he confirms is that earth had more sea than land. Seventy-one percent of the earth is filled with water. This shows that people can inhabit only the remaining part that is available. But the poet wonders why people would choose to stay away from each other even if there is little space available for them. If there is one thing that the poet could not understand, then it is this. He says that he had cracked some of the most unanswered questions, confirmed and re-checked on existing myths and discoveries, but this is something that he would never understand.
Earth is covered mostly by water
The earth, being the creation of God, is a place for all human beings to live peacefully. Instead, men choose to fight each other and spread hatred based on religion, colour etc., without realising that life is short and one must live life to the fullest. They build boundaries, marking certain land as their territory. In the pursuit of material happiness, people fight each other and are even ready to kill. This is one concept that the poet would never understand as it involves unnecessary hatred.
People draw boundaries for themselves