War and Exile

About this poem

This poem was written in 1947, when I was a schoolboy in attendance at Rollington Town Primary School, located at St. James Road in Eastern Kingston, Jamaica , West Indies, shortly after the ending of World War II, and at a time in history, in the 1940s, when British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, had issued a clarion call for Great Britain to wage war against Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany. This stirring rallying cry was penned by Jamaica’s Poet Laureate, Claude McKay during the war years. The commanding words which still ring out are as follows: “If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot. while round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making the mark at our accursed lot.” All of this was fresh in my memory as a young student, who also at that time was exposed to Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s epic novel, Crime and Punishment, which I had come across during my early school years. Dostoevsky had spent ten years imprisonment in harsh Siberia prior to his composing Crime and Punishment which, not surprisingly, focuses on the mental anguish and moral turpitude of Rodion Raskolnikov, the story’s protagonist. Upon reflection, I have since realized that my young mind’s eye connected the two disparate events, off Dostoevsky’s arrest and imprisonment in the Peter Paul Fortress, as well the “inglorious “ horror of World War II. Nevertheless, I saw in both events, the archetypal struggle of the human race to confront and overcome all obstacles, and to forge ahead; perhaps even to celebrate gloriously, as the poem War and Exile suggests lyrically, “Alleloup, alleloup! And you drink your soup.” The reader should note that culinary items and cuisine, which delight the Jamaican appetite, are employed in the poem. more »