Read the excerpt from Midsummer by Derek Walcott.With the stampeding hiss and scurry of green lemmings, midsummer’s leaves race to extinction like the roarof a Brixton riot tunneled by water hoses;they seethe toward autumn’s fire—it is in their nature,being men as well as leaves, to die for the sun.

The speaker compares the leaves’ rush toward autumn to the Brixton riot, then says that both leaves and men are “in their nature” to die for the sun. This suggests the riot, like the leaves’ seasonal change, was driven by forces that made it seem somewhat inevitable. The excerpt does not say the riot was a mistake or that it should have happened at a different time.

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