The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 Read Online Free Page A

fire?
    Girls’ faces dim with time, Andreuille all gold …
    Sunday. The grass peeps through the breaking pier.
    Tables in the trees, like entering Renoir.
    Maintenant je n’ai plus ni fortune, ni pouvoir  …
    But when the light was setting through thin hair,
    holding whose hand by what trees, what old wall.
    Two honest women, Christ, where are they gone?
    Out of that wonder, what do I most recall?
    The darkness closing round a fisherman’s oar.
    The sound of water gnawing at bright stone.

ANADYOMENE
    The shoulders of a shining nereid
    Glide in warm shallows, nearing the white sand;
    Thighs tangled in the golden weed,
    Did fin flash there, or woman’s hand?
    Weed dissolves to burnished hair,
    Foam now, where was milk-white breast,
    Did thigh or dolphin cleave the air?
    Half-woman and half-fish, or best
    Both fish and woman, let them keep
    Their elusive mystery.
    Hurt, the wound shuts itself in sleep,
    As water closes round the oar,
    And as no oar can wound the sea.
    Confused, the senses waken
    To a renewed delight,
    She to herself has taken
    Sea-music and sea-light.

A SEA-CHANTEY
    Â Â Â Â  Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
    Â Â Â Â  Luxe, calme, et volupté.
    Â 
    Anguilla, Adina,
    Antigua, Cannelles,
    Andreuille, all the l’s,
    Voyelles, of the liquid Antilles,
    The names tremble like needles
    Of anchored frigates,
    Yachts tranquil as lilies,
    In ports of calm coral,
    The lithe, ebony hulls
    Of strait-stitching schooners,
    The needles of their masts
    That thread archipelagoes
    Refracted embroidery
    In feverish waters
    Of the sea-farer’s islands,
    Their shorn, leaning palms,
    Shaft of Odysseus,
    Cyclopic volcanoes,
    Creak their own histories,
    In the peace of green anchorage;
    Flight, and Phyllis,
    Returned from the Grenadines,
    Names entered this Sabbath,
    In the port-clerk’s register;
    Their baptismal names,
    The sea’s liquid letters,
    Repos donnez a cils …
    And their blazing cargoes
    Of charcoal and oranges;
    Quiet, the fury of their ropes.
    Daybreak is breaking
    On the green chrome water,
    The white herons of yachts
    Are at Sabbath communion,
    The histories of schooners
    Are murmured in coral,
    Their cargoes of sponges
    On sandspits of islets
    Barques white as white salt
    Of acrid Saint Maarten,
    Hulls crusted with barnacles,
    Holds foul with great turtles,
    Whose ship-boys have seen
    The blue heave of Leviathan,
    A sea-faring, Christian,
    And intrepid people.
    Now an apprentice washes his cheeks
    With salt water and sunlight.
    In the middle of the harbor
    A fish breaks the Sabbath
    With a silvery leap.
    The scales fall from him
    In a tinkle of church-bells;
    The town streets are orange
    With the week-ripened sunlight,
    Balanced on the bowsprit
    A young sailor is playing
    His grandfather’s chantey
    On a trembling mouth-organ.
    The music curls, dwindling
    Like smoke from blue galleys,
    To dissolve near the mountains.
    The music uncurls with
    The soft vowels of inlets,
    The christening of vessels,
    The titles of portages,
    The colors of sea-grapes,
    The tartness of sea-almonds,
    The alphabet of church-bells,
    The peace of white horses,
    The pastures of ports,
    The litany of islands,
    The rosary of archipelagoes,
    Anguilla, Antigua,
    Virgin of Guadeloupe,
    And stone-white Grenada
    Of sunlight and pigeons,
    The amen of calm waters,
    The amen of calm waters,
    The amen of calm waters.

IN A GREEN NIGHT
    The orange tree, in various light,
    Proclaims perfected fables now
    That her last season’s summer height
    Bends from each overburdened bough.
    She has her winters and her spring,
    Her molt of leaves, which in their fall
    Reveal, as with each living thing,
    Zones truer than the tropical.
    For if by night each golden sun
    Burns in a comfortable creed,
    By noon harsh fires have begun
    To quail those splendors which they feed.
    Or mixtures of the dew and dust
    That early shone her orbs of brass,
    Mottle her splendors with the