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The Casualties
(To Chinua Achebe)
The casualties are not only those who are dead;
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are wounded,
Though they await burial by instalment.
The casualties are not only those who are lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night;
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven,
Nowhere as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started
A fire and now cannot put it out. Thousands
Are burning that had no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who escaping
The shattered shell become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls.
The casualties are many, and a good number well
Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck;
They are the emissaries of rift,
So smug in smoke-rooms they haunt abroad,
They do not see the funeral piles
At home eating up the forests.
They are wandering minstrels who, beating on
The drums of the human heart, draw the world
Into a dance with rites it does not know.
The drums overwhelm the guns . . .
Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges
When not in the niche others left,
We fall,
All casualties of the war,
Because we cannot hear each other speak,
Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd,
Because whether we know or
Do not the extent of wrongs on all sides,
We are characters now other than before
The war began, the stay-at-home unsettled
By taxes and rumours, the looters for office
And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return,
We are all casualties,
All sagging as are
The cases celebrated for kwashiorkor,
The unforeseen camp-follower of not just our war.
– John Pepper Clark
Reference
Clark, J.P. “The Casualties.” In Casualties: Poems 1966-68, 37-38. New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1970.
Read Also:
- Content Analysis of John Pepper Clark’s “The Casualities”
- Poem: Abiku by John Pepper Clark
- Content Analysis of John Pepper Clark’s IBADAN
- Critical Analysis of John Pepper Clark’s “The Wives’ Revolt”
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