Who is the persona and what is his attitude in the poem "This is the dark time, my love" by Martin Carter?

Martin Carter (1927-1997) was a poet  of mixed European,
East Indian, and African descent who lived in British Guyana, a country in S. America
that was a colony of Great Britain until 1966.  Many of his poems deal with themes of
politics, resistance, and protest against colonialism (see first link
below).

"This is the dark time, my love" fits into this
category of poem.

The narrator of the poem seems to be a
man who is addressing his "love"; whether this person is his lover or his child is
debatable.

The poem begins with a simple description
of nightfall:

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This is the dark time, my love,
All
round the land brown beetles crawl about
The shining sun is hidden in the
sky.

The description quickly
turns to a metaphorical darkness of oppression and
misery:

Red
flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow
This is the dark time, my love,

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.
It is the
festival of guns, the carnival of
misery.

Based on the general
themes of Carter's poetry, and on his political activism, it can be safely assumed that
he is referring to the misery of colonial oppression.  This view is strengthened by the
reference near the end of the poem to "the stranger invader"--the British colonizers who
have invaded from a "strange," foreign land.

As its title
indicates, this is a "dark," pessimistic poem.  As the poem concludes, the "stranger
invader" is so powerful that he is "Watching you sleep and aiming at your
dream."