Author: Derek Walcott

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky, I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s […]

Koening knew now there was no one on the river. Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies And curtained with […]

The time will come When, with elation You will greet yourself arriving At your own door, in your own mirror […]

1 Adios, Carenage In idle August, while the sea soft, And leaves of brown islands stick to the rim Of […]

There are so many islands! As many islands as the stars at night On that branched tree from which meteors […]

You can’t put in the ground swell of the organ From the Christiansted, St. Croix, Anglican Church Behind the paratrooper’s […]

Better a jungle in the head Than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered By the fireflies’ crooked street; Winter lamps […]

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky Of this black August. My sister, the sun, Broods in […]

Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles, One a hack’s hired prose, I earn Me exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach […]

The last leaves fell like notes from a piano And left their ovals echoing in the ear; With gawky music […]

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies, Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt. […]

As for that other thing Which comes when the eyelid is glazed And the wax gleam From the unwrinkled forehead […]

Broad sun-stoned beaches. White heat. A green river. A bridge, Scorched yellow palms From the summer-sleeping house Drowsing through August. […]

This coral’s hape ecohes the hand It hollowed. Its Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice, As your breast in my […]

Those five or six young guys Lunched on the stoop That oven-hot summer night Whistled me over. Nice And friendly. […]

There were still shards of an ancient pastoral In those shires of the island where the cattle drank Their pools […]

Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday, In all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleeping Those volcanoes […]

There is a shattered palm On this fierce shore, Its plumes the rusting helm- Et of a dead warrior. Numb […]

Man, I suck me tooth when I hear How dem croptime fiddlers lie, And de wailing, kiss-me-arse flutes That bring […]

When sunset, a brass gong, Vibrate through Couva, Is then I see my soul, swiftly unsheathed, Like a white cattle […]