A Far Cry from Africa - Derek Walcott : Summary and 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?

 

"A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt / Of Africa."

 

The continent is metaphorically described as an animal or the landscape of Africa with a “tawny pelt,” immediately evoking colonial images of the wild and untamed. The wind symbolizes disturbance perhaps colonialism or violence, disrupting the land and its indigenous life. From a postcolonial lens, this line introduces Africa as a colonized space with violence and troubles.  

 

 

"Kikuyu, quick as flies, / Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt."

 

The Kikuyu, a Kenyan ethnic group, are depicted in a controversial simile “quick as flies” possibly alluding to British colonial propaganda that dehumanized natives. The line critiques how colonial discourse represents the colonized as primitive and wild, while ironically referencing their brutal repression during the Mau Mau uprising. The “bloodstreams” reflect the literal and metaphorical bleeding of the land through conflict.

 

 

"Corpses are scattered through a paradise."

 

This contrast between death (“corpses”) and “paradise” exposes the violent encounter between the colonizers and the native tribes. Postcolonial critique highlights the irony: what the colonizer calls “paradise” is a graveyard for the colonized.

 

 

"Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries: / 'Waste no compassion on these separate dead!'"

 

The worm, “colonel of carrion,” is a grim pun: a metaphor for the inhumanity of military or colonial logic.“Separate dead” suggests the colonial view that native lives are less valuable emphasizing how death is justified under empire.

 

 

"Statistics justify and scholars seize / The salients of colonial policy."

 

These lines critique how imperial violence is normalised through statistics and academic discourse. Postcolonial theory often critiques the role of knowledge-production (Foucault, Said) in sustaining imperial power.

 

 

"What is that to the white child hacked in bed? / To savages, expendable as Jews?"

 

These controversial lines highlight the double standards of colonial morality: the horror of violence is only registered when it affects white lives. The phrase “expendable as Jews” critiques this racist hierarchy of grief, pointing toward historical atrocities like the Holocaust, juxtaposing it with African suffering to question selective humanism in colonial ethics.

 

"Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break / In a white dust of ibises whose cries"

 

The image of “beaters”  evokes the organized, almost ritualized violence of colonial hunts.

 

“White dust” and “ibises” (birds sacred in Egyptian mythology) symbolize the loss of sacredness and purity defiled by colonial brutality.

 

 

"Have wheeled since civilization’s dawn / From the parched river or beast-teeming plain."

 

The birds’ cries “since civilization’s dawn” connect colonial violence to ancient cycles of domination, suggesting that empire is an age-old pattern. The natural imagery contrasts with the unnatural cruelty of empire.

 

 

"The violence of beast on beast is read / As natural law, but upright man / Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain."

 

Here, Walcott critiques the justification of human cruelty by naturalizing violence (“beast on beast”) while showing that humans go further by moralizing and glorifying war. This aligns with postcolonial critiques of the civilizing mission: violence is justified in the name of “civilization” or divine purpose.

 

 

"Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars / Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,"

 

 

The “tightened carcass of a drum” may symbolize both the instruments of African culture and the instruments of war , twisted by colonial militarism. Postcolonial thought sees such appropriations as examples of how colonizers distort native culture.

 

 

"While he calls courage still that native dread / Of the white peace contracted by the dead."

 

“White peace” is ironic, it’s peace built on mass death and silencing.The phrase “native dread” may imply that courage (from the colonizer’s perspective) is really the colonized person’s fear masquerading as resistance.

 

"Again brutish necessity wipes its hands / Upon the napkin of a dirty cause,"

 

A striking metaphor: necessity (a colonial excuse for action) cleans itself on a "dirty cause", meaning the justification for violence is false and impure. This echoes the idea of moral laundering, presenting colonial oppression as moral duty.

 

 

"Again / A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,"

 

A reference to the Spanish Civil War and the political disillusionment it caused. Suggests that moral outrage is repeatedly wasted when faced with imperial atrocities.

 

 

"The gorilla wrestles with the superman."

 

A metaphor for the clash between the colonized (brutalized as “gorilla”) and the colonizer

Postcolonial theory often highlights how colonized people are animalized, and the colonizer elevated as a transcendent figure.

 

 

"I who am poisoned with the blood of both, / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?"

 

This is the emotional and postcolonial heart of the poem. Walcott confesses his hybrid identity: part African, part European. He is “poisoned” by this inheritance—unable to fully belong to either culture. Postcolonial theorists like Homi Bhabha discuss such hybridity as a space of conflict and creativity, where identity is fractured and ambivalent.

 

 

"I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?"

 

Walcott laments his double betrayal: he opposes colonial rule yet loves the English language.

This reveals the postcolonial writer’s paradox, how to resist empire while using its language. Like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, many postcolonial writers wrestle with this linguistic dilemma.

 

 

"Betray them both, or give back what they give?"

 

A choice between cultural disloyalty or complicity.

 

 

"How can I face such slaughter and be cool? / How can I turn from Africa and live?"

 

The poem ends with unresolved anguish. The speaker cannot emotionally or ethically detach from Africa, nor can he reconcile his place in its suffering.

 

This final question encapsulates the postcolonial condition of exile, guilt, and longing.

 

A Far Cry from Africa critiques both the brutality of colonial oppression and the violent reactions it provokes. Walcott exposes the moral hypocrisy of empire. The poem is both personal and political a lyrical meditation on being torn between histories, languages, and loyalties. In the broader context of postcolonial literature, Walcott’s poem joins works by Chinua Achebe, Aimé Césaire, and others in articulating the profound consequences of empire on individual identity and collective memory.