Factual Analysis Of We Have Come Home By Lenrie Peters

The poem "We Have Come Home" by Lenrie Peters has the following issues in discussion: slavery, civilization, Africanism, etc. Some people believe that the poem is about some Africans who returned home to Africa after schooling in the overseas but frankly speaking, it's not (irrespective of how anybody coin it to resemble such).

Issue of slavery and the other aforementioned are very glaring in the poem. The act of slavery is truly a massacre of the soul and the survival for freedom is like a bloodless war. Even the poet or the poem speaker personified their tiny prisoners' cells to be like a human being full of pride for massacring many humans souls. They finally got their freedoms after the price for it has been paid "When we have asked/ What does it cost/ To be loved and left alone". 

On the issue of civilization, the poem speaker made the readers to realise that when they got back to Africa, they met environmental change which was still in its dawn but the change on ground was the doing of their slave masters who now parade their lands in military uniform (something the poet symbolized to be "The death march"). Let's look at the issue of Africanism in the poem, there are sweet images of Africa, her customs and believes. "The gurgling drums/ Echo the stars/ The forest howls/ And between the trees/ The dark sun appear" and the superstitious African believe in the roaming of spirits "the thundering rain/ The famine the drought/ The sudden spirit/ Lingers on the road"

We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the
soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’

We have come home
Bringing the pledge
Which is written in rainbow
colours
Across the sky-for burial
But is not the time
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow
The gurgling drums
Echo the stars
The forest howls
And between the trees
The dark sun appears.

We have come home
When the dawn falters
Singing songs of other lands
The death march
Violating our ears
Knowing all our loves and tears
Determined by the spinning
coin

We have come home
To the green foothills
To drink from the cup
Of warm and mellow birdsong
‘To the hot beaches
Where the boats go out to sea
Threshing the ocean’s harvest
And the hovering, plunging
Gliding gulls shower kisses on
the waves

We have come home
Where through the lightening
flash
And the thundering rain
The famine the drought,
The sudden spirit
Lingers on the road
Supporting the tortured
remnants
of the flesh
That spirit which asks no
favour
of the world
But to have dignity.
Copyright © Lenrie Peters

MUST NOT MISS:-
>>>the Panic of Growing Older by Lenrie Peters
>>>Preoccupation of Lenrie Peters in the Panic of Growing Older
>>>Relate the Panic of Growing Older by Lenrie Peters to a Stitch in Time Saves Nine
>>>Factual Analysis of We Have Come Home by Lenrie Peters
>>>The Use of Imagery in We Have Come Home by Lenrie Peters
>>>Simple Summary of the Fence by Lenrie Peters
>>>Homecoming by Lenrie Peters

    READ MORE POETIC ANALYSIS >>>

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)