To The Indians Who Died in South Africa
About Author
The more one tries to say about T.S. Eliot, the more one fumbles for adjectives to describe the prodigious genius. Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965) was born in America (St. Louis) to a family where tradition was in commerce and academic studies. Eliot, educated at Harvard and settling in England in 1915 and acquiring citizenship in 1927, became the editor of the imagist periodical The Egoist and the critical journal The Criterion. Through these periodicals, he molded public opinion according to his ideas about art, classics, their meanings, and their importance in our society. Equally prolific is his poetic career, where he wrote poems like The Wasteland, Hollow Men, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, etc. Besides, the poems he also wrote a number of plays like Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, etc.
Poem
Metal giraffes march up the bluff
toward the lighthouse. In the moonlight,
whales, or their ghosts, litter the sand.
There is a museum by the park that houses
apartheid; contained in stiff wax dummies.
The tour bus stops on the road’s edge.
On the right a black town, the left Indian.
Pointing he says: This is the racial divide.
Stopping at the bar, the drink menu offers—
Red’s Divas only five rand each.
Each night the pounding sea reminds me
that, here, women are older than God.
These people carry their dead with them,
plastering them onto every met face.
Yet love hums like tuning forks
and the fading spreading sound
is the growth of something more.
Their absence is loud and I long
for the confetti flutter of butterflies.
Abattoirs litter the landscape with the sinister
air of murder, signs proclaiming: Zumba Butchery,
as though this is where the Zumba’s blood-
lust got the better of them.
The air conditioner in my room hums
a dirge to a sea too busy spreading rumors.
Death skips between street children
playing hopscotch in the traffic.
The woman singing in Zulu, in a Jamaican bar,
is calling down fire, calling down fire.
There is no contradiction.
This poem presents a bleak picture of South Africa, where racial divides and the legacy of apartheid still haunt the landscape. The metal giraffes marching up the bluff toward the lighthouse symbolize a kind of industrial progress that is at odds with the natural world, where even the whales are dead or ghostly. The museum with its stiff wax dummies is a sterile representation of the past, unable to capture the pain and suffering that still lingers in the present.
The tour bus's stop at the racial divide highlights the continued segregation that exists in the country, with the black and Indian towns separated by an invisible line. The drink menu's mention of Red's Divas reinforces the idea of objectification and commodification of women's bodies.
Despite the pervasive sense of death and decay, there is also a sense of hope and resilience. The love that hums like tuning forks suggests a deeper connection that transcends the physical world. The absence of butterflies, which are often associated with transformation and renewal, is a reminder that change is slow and difficult.
The abattoirs and Zumba Butchery signs emphasize the violence that is also a part of life in South Africa, where death seems to be omnipresent. The air conditioner's dirge-like hum reinforces the sense of foreboding.
Finally, the woman singing in Zulu in a Jamaican bar seems to bring all these elements together. She calls down fire, a symbol of both destruction and renewal, and there is no contradiction. It suggests that even in the midst of all this pain and suffering, there is still the possibility of transformation and rebirth.
This poem presents a bleak picture of South Africa, where racial divides and the legacy of apartheid still haunt the landscape. The metal giraffes marching up the bluff toward the lighthouse symbolize a kind of industrial progress that is at odds with the natural world, where even the whales are dead or ghostly. The museum with its stiff wax dummies is a sterile representation of the past, unable to capture the pain and suffering that still lingers in the present.
The tour bus's stop at the racial divide highlights the continued segregation that exists in the country, with the black and Indian towns separated by an invisible line. The drink menu's mention of Red's Divas reinforces the idea of objectification and commodification of women's bodies.
Despite the pervasive sense of death and decay, there is also a sense of hope and resilience. The love that hums like tuning forks suggests a deeper connection that transcends the physical world. The absence of butterflies, which are often associated with transformation and renewal, is a reminder that change is slow and difficult.
The abattoirs and Zumba Butchery signs emphasize the violence that is also a part of life in South Africa, where death seems to be omnipresent. The air conditioner's dirge-like hum reinforces the sense of foreboding.
Finally, the woman singing in Zulu in a Jamaican bar seems to bring all these elements together. She calls down fire, a symbol of both destruction and renewal, and there is no contradiction. It suggests that even in the midst of all this pain and suffering, there is still the possibility of transformation and rebirth.
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