Derek Walcott's, A Far Cry From Africa

It is 1.47am. I should be in bed. I’m not. I’m not an insomniac, there is just no sleep in my eyes, perhaps because I have not tried. My head is empty and my mind wanders into nothing exactly, many times. So, I browse the internet, looking for that nothing exactly and look what I found: Derek Walcott’s A Far Cry from Africa on the Norton Anthology of Poetry website.

I know we all love this poem. You don't? Oh, common!

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.
5     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?
10     To savages, expendable as Jews?

 You can read the complete poem HERE