Africa Verse

I dreamt I saw an eye, a pretty eye
In your hands
Glittering, wet and sikening
Like a dull onyx set in a crown of thorns
I did not know you were dead
When you dropped it in my lap

What horrors of human sacrifice
Have you seen, executioner?
What agonies of tortured men
Who sat through nights and nights of pain
Tongue-tied by the wicked sappor
Gazing at you with hot imploring eyes?

Those white lilies tossed their little heads then
In the moon-steeped ponds;
There was bouncing gaiety in the crisp chirping of the cricket in the undergrowth
And as the surf-boats splintered the waves
I saw the rainbow in your eyes
And in the flash of your teeth
As each crystal shone,

I saw sitting hand in hand with melancholy
A little sunny child
Playing at the marbles with husks of fallen stars:
Horrors were your flowers then;
The blood-bright bougainvilleas,
They delighted you.

Why do you weep
And offer me this little gift
Of a dull onyx set in a crown of thorns?

Poem Analysis

This is a nightmare poem. And yet we are not allowed to escape without feeling by dismissing it as a dream. The poet uses elements that are realistic enough to enforce our reactions. Like a dream, the poem shifts in time and point of emphasis, from the gory picture of the abstracted eye (lines 1-6), to contemplation of the horror that is part of the experience of the executioner (lines 7-10)

Then we are taken back to the time of childhood where the beauty, liveliness and innocence of the surroundings (line 12-16) are contrasted with the disposition and not-so-innocent pastimes which formed the character of the executioner.

Finally, we are brought back to the present, to the gory dismembered eye and the implied rejection of the executioner's bloody peace-offering.

This is the way I’d like to go,

If you must know.

I would like to go while still young,

While the dew is wet on the grass;

To perish in a great air crash,

With a silver ‘plane burning bright

Like a flashing star in the night;

While the huge wreckage all ablaze,

Shines brightly for my last embrace

I’d like to see the flames consume

Each nerve and bone and hair and nail,

Till of dust naught but ash remains.

Or as stone, swiftly sink unseen.

But if I should hear someone wail,

Because dust has gone back to dust,

Mad with fury, I shall return

To smite the poor wretch on the head.

So, let me go when I am young,

And the dew is still on the fern,

With a silver ‘plane burning bright,

Like a flashing star in the night.


Mother, do not grieve when I’m gone!

This is my wish, I’d have it so.

This mere burden of flesh was I,

Whom you loved and tended dearly

But you, my love, where’er you be,

Remember these warm lips of mine

That poured their youthful passion out,

These wide eyes that mirrored my soul

And beheld wonders in your eyes;

This mind that godlike stood alone,

The head that lay in your gentle lap,

The very hand that held this pen,

The heart that daring reached the heights,

The all of me that gave you joy,

Cleansed now of all impurities

By the red all-devouring flames,

Will though dust, remain, believe me,

Part of th’eternal Mind of God.

Poem Analysis

R. E. G. Armattoe was born in 1913 at Denu in Gold Coast, now Ghana. When he was 13 his father sent him to Europe to complete his studies. He became a medical doctor and worked in Northern Ireland for ten years.
He returned to then Gold Coast and saw his parents so old, and had had repeated strokes, that turned them into vegetables. He wept inconsolably at his parents pathetic conditions, that he prayed for them to die so as to end their sufferings and misery. That was when he wrote the poem above – “The Way I would Like To Die”, and prayed to die young. So as to spare him the agony of getting old, and suffering some infirmities.

Line 4   while the dew is wet on the grass   the dew is wet on the grass in the morning-hence the image here recalls another metaphorical phrase, the morning of life, when one is young.

Line 31 this mind that godlike stood alone  Armattoe refers to himself, perhaps to his lone struggle against what he considered a political ineptitude and ignorance.

Armattoe died young indeed, though not in a plane crash.


There is a subtle change of mood in this poem. Where does it occur?