The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 Read Online Free

gently in the sentiment
    Of a small table by the harbor’s edge.
    Hearts learn to die well that have died before.
    My sun-puffed carcass, its eyes full of sand,
    Rolls, spun by breakers on a southern shore.
    â€œThis way is best, before we both get hurt.”
    Look how I turn there, featureless, inert.
    That weary phrase moves me to stroke her hand
    While winds play with the corners of her skirt.
    Better to lie, to swear some decent pledge,
    To resurrect the buried heart again;
    To twirl a glass and smile, as in pain,
    At a small table by the water’s edge.
    â€œYes, this is best, things might have grown much worse…”
    And that is all the truth, it could be worse;
    All is exhilaration on the eve,
    Especially, when the self-seeking heart
    So desperate for some mirror to believe
    Finds in strange eyes the old original curse.
    So cha cha cha, begin the long goodbyes,
    Leave the half-tasted sorrows of each pledge,
    As the salt wind brings brightness to her eyes,
    At a small table by the water’s edge.
    I walk with her into the brightening street;
    Stores rattling shut, as brief dusk fills the city.
    Only the gulls, hunting the water’s edge
    Wheel like our lives, seeking something worth pity.

A LETTER FROM BROOKLYN
    An old lady writes me in a spidery style,
    Each character trembling, and I see a veined hand
    Pellucid as paper, travelling on a skein
    Of such frail thoughts its thread is often broken;
    Or else the filament from which a phrase is hung
    Dims to my sense, but caught, it shines like steel,
    As touch a line, and the whole web will feel.
    She describes my father, yet I forget her face
    More easily than my father’s yearly dying;
    Of her I remember small, buttoned boots and the place
    She kept in our wooden church on those Sundays
    Whenever her strength allowed;
    Gray haired, thin voiced, perpetually bowed.
    â€œI am Mable Rawlins,” she writes, “and know both your parents”;
    He is dead, Miss Rawlins, but God bless your tense:
    â€œYour father was a dutiful, honest,
    Faithful and useful person.”
    For such plain praise what fame is recompense?
    â€œA horn-painter, he painted delicately on horn,
    He used to sit around the table and paint pictures.”
    The peace of God needs nothing to adorn
    It, no glory nor ambition.
    â€œHe is twenty-eight years buried,” she writes, “he was called home,
    And is, I am sure, doing greater work.”
    The strength of one frail hand in a dim room
    Somewhere in Brooklyn, patient and assured,
    Restores my sacred duty to the Word.
    â€œHome, home,” she can write, with such short time to live,
    Alone as she spins the blessings of her years;
    Not withered of beauty if she can bring such tears,
    Nor withdrawn from the world that breaks its lovers so;
    Heaven is to her the place where painters go,
    All who bring beauty on frail shell or horn,
    There was all made, thence their lux-mundi drawn,
    Drawn, drawn, till the thread is resilient steel,
    Lost though it seems in darkening periods,
    And there they return to do work that is God’s.
    So this old lady writes, and again I believe,
    I believe it all, and for no man’s death I grieve.

BRISE MARINE
    K with quick laughter, honey skin and hair
    and always money. In what beach shade, what year
    has she so scented with her gentleness
    I cannot watch bright water but think of her
    and that fine morning when she sang o’ rare
    Ben’s lyric of “the bag o’ the bee”
    and “the nard in the fire”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€œnard in the fire”
    against the salty music of the sea
    the fresh breeze tangling each honey tress
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â and what year was the