What is the tone of the poem "Africa" by David Diop?

This
intriguingly unique poem has an
overall tone and a secondary,
middle
tone along with a tertiary (third)
tone.

The overall
tone is heard in the first six and last two
lines. In between
are the two other tones, the secondary and the tertiary.

The overall tone begins with the first line then
melds
into the secondary tone part way through
the seventh line:
"Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields." The
secondary
tone carries on from there to "But a
grave voice answers me," which
introduces the tertiary
tone before the poem returns to the
original, overall tone.
Knowing where these divisions are will you
help
you to identify the tones when you reread the poem and look for these tones yourself.
Now,
what are these tones?

Tone is the feeling or
emotion
expressed by the poetic speaker or persona toward the subject or characters
being
written about: tone is what the speaker feels about what is being said.
The first
tone, the first expression of the
speaker's feeling, is triumphal. A triumphal
feeling is a celebratory
feeling. The speaker feels triumphal when he reflects on Africa because
it is
a proud homeland lineage full of images of might and greatness, as his grandmother
sings
of it.

The secondary
tone in "Your
beautiful black blood that irrigates the
fields," is a tone sadly desperate. The speaker is
saddened by the images of
backbreaking labor under the whip of slavery and desperate to know if
this
whipped Africa is the same Africa that his grandmother triumphally sings about, the
Africa
that flows through his veins.

The
tertiary tone
is spoken by "a grave voice"
(perhaps a collective voice from the grave) and is a
gentle yet earnest tone
that gently reprimands while earnestly exhorting. This gentle, earnest
tone
expresses the feeling of the "grave voice" as it points the speaker, who is
like
an "impetuous child," toward the correct present-day image of Africa:
Africa is not
the image of bent and whipped backs but the image a tree,
"young and strong," that is
acquiring and bearing the fruit of
liberty:

That is your
Africa springing
up anew
Springing up patiently, obstinately
Whose fruit
bit
by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.