“Blinded by headlamps, deaf to taxi klaxons, she lifts her face from/ the cheap, pitch oil flare/toward white stars, like cities, flashing neon, burning to be the bitch/she must become.”
If the night were a real person, then the speaker would have been culpable of misogyny for utilizing the term "bitch" to label it. However, figuratively, the term "bitch" alludes to the diverse life in the night that is augmented by ‘headlamps’ and ‘taxi klaxons.’ The assorted life implies that the night in the Port of Spain is dynamic and accommodative notwithstanding its darkness. The ‘headlamps and oil flares’ irradiate and upsurge the port’s sparkle.
“Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:/'Waste no compassion on these separate dead!”
The personification of worms formulates an imagery of putrefying bodies that have not yet been interred. The bodies have worms all over them. The wretched scenario provokes the ‘cry from Africa.”
“I who am poisoned with the blood of both,/Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?/I who have cursed/The drunken officer of British rule, how choose/Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?/Betray them both, or give back what they give?/How can I face such slaughter and be cool?/How can I turn from Africa and live?”
The speaker is biracial; as a result, the speaker is in a quandary over whether to take Africans’ side or the colonialists’. Ratifying colonialism would be identical to betraying Africa. Conversely, reproaching colonialism would amount to betrayal of Britain which is a fragment of the speaker’s race. In such a case, the speaker would focus on decency and not race for humans are defined by ethics and not race.
