Far Cry From Africa Poem Analysis

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?

Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

Derek Walcott

The poem opens with a metaphorical reference to a wind sweeping through the plains of Africa. The wind is the wind of rebellion. The Kikuyus, the tribesmen are bracing themselves for a bloodbath.

In the second stanza the scene changes to the aftermath of killings. ''  Corpses are scattered through the paradise' 'Paradise is the legendary all perfect place God created for the first parents of mankind. Different cultures locate it in different places. The poet seems to refer to Africa as the paradise. It is contradiction in terms  to see corpses in paradise. There lies the far cry from Africa. Africa was a peaceful continent before the arrival of colonizers. They brought mass scale violence and bloodshed to Africa.

In this situation of dead bodies scattered throughout the country, only the worms can be happy and cry; '' waste no compassion on these separate dead'' . The dead bodies are rotting all over the place and the worms are feeding on them irrespective of whether they are white or black.

In this context of violence and killing, there are scholars who cite statistics to justify the colonial policy of white man's presence in Africa. The white man came to the colonies to civilize the natives. They educated the natives and changed their primitive ways of behavior. Scholars may be trying to justify the white man's presence with the number of schools and other welfare centers he has built for the native. They are the salient features of the colonial presence.

But the poet's harrowing question is what to do all those statistics matter to the child of six hacked to death. As we have mentioned a child of six, named  Michael Ruck was hacked to death along with its parents by rebels. This implies that the white man's effort to civilize the native was a failure. In fact the whole venture of civilizing the native was only a facade the white man created to hide behind in his ugly work of grabbing the land of the native and then exploiting it for his own filthy lucre. In this context it is said that the white man gave the Bible  into the hands of the native and asked him to close his eyes and  pray and when the native opened his eyes he found the white man had grabbed all his land.

Thus Walcott is trying to show the irrelevance of statistics to facts. No amount of statistics at the end can redeem hard facts. Scholars trying to justify the colonial presence will not bring that innocent child back to life. In fact implied in the poem is also the fact that scholars tell lies in what they write.

The poet is continuing in the same vein of savage violence to the colonial masters when he says: ''To savages, expendable as Jews.'' Jews were sent to gas chambers and killed in millions by Hitler because of the difference of their ethnicity. They were ''expendable'' or disposable by the NAZIs. In like manner the white have become disposable to the blacks and vice versa. Implied in his view of the easy disposability of human beings is a callous disregard for the human being.

The next stanza seems to focus on the action of the white man in searching for the rebels. The picture  is one  of the natives hiding in bushes and the white masters beating the bushes to drive them out as when hunting. Ibises crying out suggest the sort of the bad omen for the natives. Their cry has wheeled out ''since civilization's dawn.'' In other words the poet seems to say  that colonial conquest and murder of the natives have also prevailed from the beginning of civilization. It is ironic that the civilized man thrived on conquering others.

In this process of using violence to conquer man follows the law of the jungle. The law of the jungle is the stronger preying on the weaker. Put in other words it is the law that says, '' might is right .'' This is the law that  that operates in the jungle. This law among animals man has taken to be his. that is why the poet says: '' The violence of beast on beast is read/ As natural law.''

The tragedy of it all is that the ''upright man'' has taken this law of the jungle as his law. The beast is  the quadruped. That is the four foot animal. Human beings have passed that stage in evolution. They have learnt to walk on two legs and be upright. This being upright is like yearning for a higher goal in his upward movement of evolution. It is like stretching out himself to reach the divine. Yet ironically according to the poet, man instead of moving up has stooped to the level of the beast in following the law of the jungle. ''Upright man seeks his divinity by inflicting pain. ''To inflict pain in the context of the poem is to kill. Killing for prey is the law of the jungle.

When killing is on a mass scale with military weapons and drums beaten till they break, we call it war. That is the upright man's way of killing. The native thinks killing the white is courage but still it arises not from courage but from fear; fear of the kind of peace white man has entered into, with the native ancestors.

This fighting the poet sees only as a ''brutish necessity. But the native who practices it, salves his conscience by labeling it as a national cause. So he cleans himself of this brutish necessity by wiping his hands on a napkin of a dirty cause. By subtle innuendo the poet suggests by that word 'dirty' that though the natives may think that their cause is right, it is still 'dirty' or ugly-wrong. Violence and killing, no matter from where they spring, are wrong.

conquerors and for that matter rebels too pay scant respect to the principle that violence is wrong. They waste no compassion on their victims.

Spanish explorers followed that principle when they conquered lands in South America. For example Hernan Cortes the Spanish conqueror of Mexico  commanded a successful siege of the Mexican capital, Aztecs, capturing it in 1521. Similarly  Francisco Pizarro and  Diego de Almagro led expeditions conquering the Incas of Peru. But the important point for our discussion is that  Pizarro executed Almagro when a dispute arose between them and the followers of Almagro assassinated Pizarro in return at Lima later. These cases amply prove the poet's point that men of violence waste no compassion on their victims. that is why the poet's allusion ''as with Spain''.

As the  Spanish spared no compassion even on their own comrade conquerors the poet sees now the ''gorilla wrestles with the white man,'' sparing no compassion on each other. The gorilla in this context has to be taken as the native and the superman, as the white man. Locked horns in battle  they show no mercy to each other. This is the way the 'upright man' follows his ancestors in the jungles, the beasts.

This gorilla wrestling with the white man ultimately the poet finds not only in far away Kenya but even within himself. He is a hybrid of white and black blood. He is a mixture of both white and black cultures.

When the poet says at the end ''Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?'' the poem becomes not only a statement on racial conflict between the white colonialist and the colored native but also a statement on the cultural rift the poet experiences within himself.

Finally the common theme of the poem that we can derive from the poem is that colonialism creates division and conflict both within and without man.

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