I. Language to focus on in the Poem

For the green turtle with her pulsing burden,

in search of the breeding ground.

For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness.

For the cormorant in his funeral silk,

the veil of iridescence on the sand,

the shadow on the sea.

For the ocean's lap with its mortal stain.

For Ahmed at the closed border.

For the soldier with his uniform of fire.

For the gunsmith and the armourer,

the boy fusilier who joined for the company,

the farmer's sons, in it for the music.

For the hook-beaked turtles,

the dugong and the dolphin,

the whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder.

For the tern, the gull and the restless wader,

the long migrations and the slow dying,

the veiled sun and the stink of anger.

For the burnt earth and the sun put out,

the scalded ocean and the blazing well.

For vengeance, and the ashes of language.

"funeral silk"

→ Oxymoron of beauty + death. The bird becomes a mourner in its own funeral.

"uniform of fire"

→ Metaphor-soldiers consumed by what they fight with. War destroys both sides.

"ashes of language"

→ Abstract noun - when war happens, even words fail. Language itself is a casualty.

Anaphora: "For..."

→ Repeated opening mirrors a funeral elegy. Each stanza is a prayer for the dead.

My turn:

Mild: “the whale struck dumb by the missile’s thunder”

Clarke uses the personification of the whale as “struck dumb” to suggest that the whale is helpless and shocked by human violence, which makes the reader empathize with nature and highlights the destructive impact of war on innocent creatures.

Spicy: "the scalded ocean and the blazing well"

The imagery of the “scalded ocean and the blazing well” presents nature as violently damaged, with the harsh adjectives suggesting pain and destruction.

This reinforces the poem’s theme of grief and destruction, showing that human actions have caused irreversible harm to the natural world.