The Star-Apple Kingdom
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral In those shires of the island where the cattle drank Their pools of shadow from an older sky, Surviving from when the landscape copied such objects
Sabbaths, W. I
Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday, In all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleeping Those volcanoes like ashen roses, or the incurable sore Of poverty, around whose puckered mouth thin
Egypt, Tobago
There is a shattered palm On this fierce shore, Its plumes the rusting helm- Et of a dead warrior. Numb Antony, in the torpor Stretching her inert Sex near him like a sleeping cat,
Parang
Man, I suck me tooth when I hear How dem croptime fiddlers lie, And de wailing, kiss-me-arse flutes That bring water to me eye! Oh, when I t’ink how from young I wasted time
The Saddhu Of Couva
When sunset, a brass gong, Vibrate through Couva, Is then I see my soul, swiftly unsheathed, Like a white cattle bird growing more small Over the ocean of the evening canes, And I sit