Dinner tonight comes with gun wounds. Our desert tongues lick the vegetable blood-the pepper strong enough to push scorpions up our heads. Guests look into the oceans of bowls as vegetables die on their tongues. The table that gathers us in an island where guerillas walk the land while crocodiles surf. Children from Alphabeta with empty palms dine with us; switchblades in their eyes, silence in their voices. When the hour to drink from the of life ticks, cholera breaks its spell on cracked lips under the spilt.

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The poem, The Dining Table, is a narrative poem in which the poet explains the human ordeal of his people during the war. As a free verse, the poem made it possible for the poet to pour out his experience poetically as he experienced it without being restricted by the rhyme and rhythmic patterns of poetry. The experiences in the poem are recollected from the events of the war that occurred in Sierra Leone years back. The poem is all about war, its pain, and suffering as well as the cause of the war. Hence, the poetic persona deploys poetic techniques to present his thoughts. He compares the Sierra Leonean war to dinner and gun wounds as the meal. He points out that what they expect from the dinner is gun wounds, and injured body filled with blood with heavy pains:. Then people who came to see the events of the war gaze on the effects of the war and also felt the pains too:.
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Educators will function admirably in school on the off chance that they see that there are cameras in each class and vital is watching them. Perfect analysis. We should learn online by such way that things should manage beautifully. Of course, talk about the civil war, as far as the African continent is concerned, is not restricted to Sierra Leone. The poem is thus fittingly regarded as a reflection on the untold hardships and anti-earth aftermath of war — any kind of war. Suggested: Read the Analysis of the Poem "Ambush". Furthermore, the poem is a situation of war, oppression, destruction and abandonment.
Our desert tongues lick the vegetable blood—the pepper strong enough to push scorpions up our heads. Guests look into the oceans of bowls as vegetables die on their tongues. The table that gathers us is an island where guerillas walk the land while crocodiles surf. Children from Alphabeta with empty palms dine with us; switchblades in their eyes, silence in their voices. When the hour to drink from the cup of life ticks, cholera breaks its spell on cracked lips Under the spilt milk of the moon, I promise to be a revolutionary, but my Nile, even without tributaries comes lazy upon its own Nile. The poet describes to the reader the horrific nature of the war which was characterised mainly by shootings, maimings and death. In the second verse, the poet recalls how the guerrillas operated freely and how they brutally killed and terrorised the people. He also recalls how Sierra Leone was thereafter threatened by an outbreak of the cholera epidemic which led to the death of many of its population. In the third verse, the poet resolves to be a change- agent a revolutionary. He admits that though he desires a political revolution, he lacks the power and the needed support for a revolution, having just survived a brutal war.