A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt <br />Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies, <br />Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt. <br />Corpses are scattered through a paradise. <br />Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries: <br />'Waste no compassion on these separate dead!' <br />Statistics justify and scholars seize <br />The salients of colonial policy. <br />What is that to the white child hacked in bed? <br />To savages, expendable as Jews? <br />Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break <br />In a white dust of ibises whose cries <br />Have wheeled since civilizations dawn <br />>From the parched river or beast-teeming plain. <br />The violence of beast on beast is read <br />As natural law, but upright man <br />Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain. <br />Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars <br />Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum, <br />While he calls courage still that native dread <br />Of the white peace contracted by the dead. <br /> <br />Again brutish necessity wipes its hands <br />Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again <br />A waste of our compassion, as with Spain, <br />The gorilla wrestles with the superman. <br />I who am poisoned with the blood of both, <br />Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? <br />I who have cursed <br />The drunken officer of British rule, how choose <br />Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? <br />Betray them both, or give back what they give? <br />How can I face such slaughter and be cool? <br />How can I turn from Africa and live?<br /><br />Derek Walcott<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-far-cry-from-africa/
