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Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,
one a hack's hired prose, I earn
me exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,
tan, burn
to slough off
this live of ocean that's self-love.
To change your language you must change your life.
I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues
Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.
One I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.
I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of flavour.
I am nearing middle
age, burnt skin
peels from my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt's riddle.
At heart there is nothing, not the dread
of death. I know to many dead.
They're all familiar, all in character,
even how they died. On fire,
the flesh no longer fears that furnace mouth
of earth,
that kiln or ashpit of the sun,
nor this clouding, unclouding sickle moon
withering this beach again like a blank page.
All its indifference is a different rage.
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walcot in the poem 'codicil talks about the sufferings of the caribbeans under colonization and post colonization.he relates experiences of the middle passage,uses the beach as a metaphor to recapture the past history of his people. imageries of elements of nature; fire, sun and moon are explored to relate the pains the poeple go through.he mentions the duality of the caribbeans who are neither here nor there,in between two cultures.he laments that the wrongs; subjugation, dehumanization and oppression melted out to the blacks can not be righted.
molly chiluwa from Nigeria