Vultures by Chinua Achebe was set in the year 1971. The poem compares humans and vultures. The poem describes a father that is the Belsen Concentration Camp commandant who comes home to see his children. Gillian Clarke’s poem Catrin tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship.

Vultures is a poem that begins in a gloomy, cloudy and unhappy setting. The poem begins with the line “In the greyness of a despondent dawn, unstirred” Alliteration is used to show that the morning’s atmosphere is cold and inhospitable. The poem also includes the Commandant’s deeds, which are shown by the author in “…Thus Commandant of Belsen Camp returning home”. This quotation from the poem shows how the father of the Belsen Camp commandant, who also works at the camp as a commander, is justified in his evil acts because his children are waiting for him to return home. Overall, the poem shows the human and the natural side of things. Because the father views his actions as loving even though he has committed evil deeds, it shows that an evil man could still love his family and feel affection. Catrin is set in an hospital ward. Or more precisely, it’s a labour ward. In the first five stanzas, Gillian describes the scene and the momentous experience that she and Catrin went through.

The poem about Catrin, in general, is a very personal poem. It is written as a free verse that describes the relationship between the author and her daughter Catrin. This poem was written in the first-person by the author, which makes it seem very personal. This poem is meant to express parental conflict as well as complex relationships. Vultures has 4 paragraphs. The second paragraph discusses the love that vultures have for one another. The fourth paragraph is about love and bad. The first sentence, which is the graphic description, uses the letter ‘d’ to convey a feeling of sadness and negativity. This is due to the fact that vultures stalk their preys and eat them. The word “despondent”, also used to describe someone who is depressed, usually because they have lost their courage or hope. The word “harbingers”, which is used to describe things that warn of the future, also sets a negative tone. The author describes how cruel and violent vultures can be. In the 8th stanza of the first verse the author states “…mate His smooth bashed in head A pebble on stem rooted in an obscene amount of feathers”. The “stem” in the juxtaposition refers to a bird’s neck, while the “dump”, or body of feathers, is its body. But this stanza also speaks of the metaphors of death and terror, with the branch the birds are sitting on being described as “broken skeletons”.

The third section talks about a father who is kind and loving, and goes home to see his young soft children. The paragraph also mentions the commandant is a kind father, who loves his children and returns home when he gets back. This can be seen in the poem’s “…for tender children at home waiting to see daddy return …”. The poem’s last paragraph is about evil and love. The poet talks of how darkness will always lead to light. He includes metaphors, such as, “in icy chambers of a brutal heart or despair because in the very germ”, this means the heart of an Ogre will be always cruel. This metaphor also has a contrast, the germ is love. The author wants to convey the message that evil and love will always coexist. This shows how in nature evil and good will always be together.

Catrin is a poem with two paragraphs. The first part of the poem is about the childbirth. The second part is two years after Catrin was born. The first few stanzas of the first paragrah begin in a white, hot hospital room. The phrase “I’ll remember you” is repeated twice to emphasize that Gillian Clarke had an important experience during her lifetime when she gave birth. Gillian Clarke had another major experience, that of connecting with her child through the umbilical cable. This also invokes a feeling of passion, both for the mother as well as the child. In the same section, contrast is also shown. For example “wild, tender circle” creates a contrast when the words tender and violent are used together. The author also uses an oxymoron in the second sentence when describing her daughter as having a “rosey, resolute glare”. This shows her to be a girl with a lot of spirit. The second-last and last stanza of the poem, “As You Ask, May You Skate in the Dark, For One More Hour” is a reference to the child’s desire to act independently, while the mother views this as dangerous.

The themes of nature, and the human condition are repeated in both Catrin Gillian Clark’s poem and Vultures Chinua Achebe’s poem. How humans and nature treat their children. How they act and communicate with each other. Overall, both themes of human and natural nature are well-interviewed in both poems.

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