To the Indians who Died in Africa - T S Eliot

 To the Indians who Died in Arica – T S Eliot

 

The man’s destination is his own village,

His own fire, and his wife’s cooking;

To sit in front of his own door at sunset

And see his grandson, and his neighbour’s grandson

Playing in the dust together.

 

Scarred but secure, he has many memories

Which return at the hour of conversation,

(The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate)

Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places,

Foreign to each other.  

 

A man’s destination is not his destiny,

Every country is home to one man

And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely

At one with his destiny, that soil in his

Let his village remember.

 

This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands,

And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.

Let those with a common purpose, action 

None the less fruitful if neither you nor we

Know, until the judgement after death,

What is the fruit of action? 

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