1. A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
2. Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
3. Batten upon the bloodstream of the veldt.
4. Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
5. Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
6. "Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
7. Satistics justify and scholars seize
8. The salient of colonial policy.
9. What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
10. To savages, expendable as Jews?
11. Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
12. In a white dust of ibises whose cries
13. Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
14. From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
15. The violence of beast on beast is read
16. As natural law, but upright man
17. Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
18. Delirious as these worried beass, his wars
19. Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
20. While he calls courage still that native dread
21. Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
22. Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
23. Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
24. A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
25. The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
26. I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
27. Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
28. I who have cursed
29. The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
30. Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
31. Betray them both, or give back what they give?
32. How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
33. How can I turn from Africa and live?
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