One Body, Two Bloods Essays - Derek Walcott, Eddie The Head

One Body, Two Bloods Essays - Derek Walcott, Eddie The Head One Body, Two Bloods The writer that I chose is Derek Walcott. The reason that I chose him was because we had never read his poetry in class and we did not cover many black poets in class. After reading much of his poetry I feel that Walcott and me have not only a lot in common but at times the same feelings toward are heritage. Walcott descended from a white grandmother and a black grandmother on both the paternal and maternal sides, hes a living example of divided heritage between two worlds. For Walcott his heritage is painful, but fortunately he can elevate personal crises into art. My family tree is identical to Walcotts, so this is why I can relate to what he is saying. A Far Cry from Africa A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies, 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 civilizations 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 superman. 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? This poem shows the reader how much pain Walcott has inside its about his own experiences. He is picturing Africa as a black leopard. At the beginning, he was explaining how the Mau Mau tribe is killing white children and this bothers him significantly. He is describing how the British and the Africans are both animals because they are both killing each other. He is comparing the massacres to those of the Jews. He said that they should have ignored the battle in Spain because it was useless. He was being tempted. The gorilla that he mentions in line 25 is from Darwin and the superman represents how people can become better. Walcott is saying that he is confused because he does not know where to turn. The reason he is confused is because he has both white and black blood from his parents, so he does not know what side to choose. He describes his heritage as a curse or something that he is not happy in receiving. Hes divided between Africa and his British culture that which he grew up on. He grew up on the English language, but he loves Africa, so he does not know where to turn if the two of them are on bad terms. He can not leave his homeland, but he also can not turn his back on the land of his anscestors. The question of identity is one of the most frequently recurring themes. He defines this not only as his problem but that of all men whose heritage comes from divided blood and culture. Nights in the Garden of Port of Spain Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells into a village; she assumes the impenetrable musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat, her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells, coals of gold oranges, braziers of melon. Commerce and tambourines increase her heat. Hellfire or the whorehouse: crossing Park Street, a surf sailors faces crests, is gone with the seas phosphorescence; the boites-de nuit tinkle like fireflies in her thick hair. Blinded by headlamps, deaf to taxi klaxons, she lifts her face from the cheap, pitch of oil flare towards white stars, like cities, flashing neon, burning to be the bitch she must become. As daylight breaks the coolie turns his tumbril of hacked, beheaded coconuts towards home. This is a