What is the theme in An African Elegy by Robert Duncan?

"An African Elegy" presents death as a subconscious force that is not fully present to the speaker except in symbolic terms. Duncan charts his relation to death through introspection, likening his own mind to Africa's jungles. His descriptions of those jungles are replete with images of suffering and death: "Death is the dog-headed man zebra striped /and surrounded by silence who walks like a lion, / who is black."