What is the meaning
Of old tongues
Reaping havoc
In new places?
This quote is an example of a rhetorical question, a literary device in which a question is asked for effect or emphasis rather than a direct answer. She asks for “the meaning” of the storm, which implies there is meaning to be found within the appearance of the storm. “Old tongues” is an example of synecdoche, a literary device in which a part stands in for a whole, in this case “tongues” meaning “voices.” There is a contrast between “old tongues” and “new places,” which speaks to the central internal conflict of the poem in which the speaker is living in a new place that she feels estranged from. The “old tongues” have brought the storm, which the poem calls a “hurricane” even though hurricanes are impossible in England — the “new place.” The storm “reaps havoc,” causing chaos and destruction, which is both external amongst the landscape and internal within the speaker.
The earth is the earth is the earth.
This is the final line of the poem, which serves as a sort of resolution to the central conflict of the poem regarding the speaker’s discordant sense of “home” between her homeland and her current place of residence. During the storm, the speaker pledges her allegiance to Oya, the Yoruban god of storms. Following Oya’s guidance, the speaker comes to understand that the storm has “come to let me know” that “the earth is the earth is the earth.” The triple repetition of the statement of the identity, i.e., A = A, compounds its power. It suggests there is a certain universality to the living on Earth and that home can be found across or beyond geographical constraints. Further, the lowercase “e” in earth emphasizes physicality and rootedness, like the physical earth found in the ground around the entire planet.
O why is my heart unchained?
This single line comprises the entire seventh stanza, which interrupts the flow of the other multi-line stanzas within the poem. Here, the speaker laments her internal feeling of being untethered, in this case to any physical location as she is caught between her homeland and her unfamiliar current location. The “o” suggests that she is calling to the faraway gods or even into the void, in a sort of soliloquy. After this outcry, the speaker turns towards Oya for guidance and finds reconciliation within the storm.
