This is the Dark Time, My Love

Martin Carter

This is the dark time, my love,

All round the land brown beetles crawl about.

The shining sun is hidden in the sky

Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.

This is the dark time, my love,

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.

It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.

Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

Who comes walking in the dark night time?

Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?

It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader

Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.

Summary

Carter writes of the pain and suffering that comes with war. He speaks directly to the struggles that Guyana faced under British colonization in 1953. Britain was quick to crush the uprising of the people when the constitution was suspended. The love that the persona has can be love for country or love for a woman.

There is a sense of gloom in the atmosphere due to the oppression of the war and the weapons of terror. The speaker alludes to the gloom in the absence of sunlight and the flowers that are drooping. The people are despondent and anxiety-stricken and are visibly oppressed by the results of the war. Death (and war) is personified as a man who tramples not only nature, but the peace and dreams of the persona’s country underfoot.

Mood

Dismal

Gloomy.

Tone

Pessimistic

Sad

Themes

War,

Conflict,

Doom,

Death

Despair.

Analysis

“This is the dark time, my love,”

The speaker starts by presenting the gloomy nature of the war in the country. The period is marked by darkness and leads to the feeling of the approaching doom and adverse outcomes. The line suggests that speaker is referring to his ‘love,’ which could simply be his lover, or his country.

“All round the land brown beetles crawl about.”

This refers to the British soldiers who occupied the country at the time. The poet uses alliteration in the ‘brown beetles’ to refer to the soldiers who filled the landscape and thereby create an atmosphere that reflects the war.

“The shining sun is hidden in the sky/ Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.”

Nature reflects the gloomy mood as the shining sun is hidden in the sky. In other words, the sun does not shine in the sky which suggests that the gloom also stems from the absence of sunlight. The sun is hidden, and this suggests that the hope of the people is hidden. The poet further reinforces the mood of the poem when he personifies the red flowers that ‘bend their heads in awful sorrow.’ The flowers are given the quality of emotion and they reflect the sorrow that the persona and the people feel. The flowers also mourn the dark times of death and sorrow. In addition, the poet mentions colour once in the poem and it is the colour of the flowers. They are red and one could say that the red represents the bloodshed that occurred during war.

“This is the dark time, my love, It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.”

The persona gives a description of the dark time and alludes to a season that is synonymous with endless oppression, the dark metal of the machines of war and sadness. “Dark” is repeated to show the pessimistic outlook as well as an atmosphere of terror. The ‘dark metal’ could represent the tankers and guns which oppress the people in the persona’s country.

“It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery. Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.”

The poet uses two oxymorons where he contradicts two ideas in close succession. He refers to this dark time of war as a festival that one can easily associate with joy and celebration and guns which are machines of terror, war, violence, death, and oppression. This is contradictory and yet the comparison reminds the reader of the incompatible nature of festival and war. The poem continues with a description of a carnival that is associated with fun and the joy of children and misery which reflects a terrible emotion of helplessness and despair. The persona speaks to the strained emotions in the faces of everyone around him- including his own countrymen and the soldiers.

“Who comes walking in the dark night time? Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?”

The poet uses rhetorical questions that lead to the personification of war and death. It hints at something being closely related to dark times such as these, who has a ‘boot of steel.’ One sees the oppressive and abusive effect war has on not only the environment but on the people of the country. It crushes the grass underfoot, showing deliberate disregard for nature and opting instead to fulfill selfish goals with needless death and suffering.

“It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.”

The poet uses personification to show death as a strange invader to the persona’s country. This man of death is said to not only crush nature under his steel boot but also watch the persona’s love sleep and aim at destroying her dream. If the love he refers to represents his country, then the “man of death” aims to wreck the chances of realizing the dreams that come with independence and freedom. The war and conflict come from the soldiers invading the country. They seek to crush the resistance and the attempts at freedom as well as the dreams and optimism of the people of the country overall.