The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 (52 page)

50   BARCELONA

to Robert Antoni

There was a roar outside like a rocket arching

over the roofs this morning, then, under

the black iron balconies, a brass band, marching,

detonated for some saint or labor union,

defending Catalonia with civic thunder.

You smiled down at them with their banners and sashes;

but all you did in Barcelona was cough,

like one of those veterans with mournful moustaches

left over from the Civil War. That is not enough

for such a great city, but you take time in portions,

one cough at a time, your personal thunder

that turns compassionate heads. What I had waited

for was the name to be a banner over every street,

crucifixions on velvet, candles and purple crêpe

for the crowd in the plaza to leap to its feet

at the flourish and trembling stasis of the matador's cape.

I could never join in the parade; I can't walk fast.

Such is time's ordinance. Lungs that rattle, eyes

that run. Now Barcelona is part of the past.

52   ELEGY

for Aimé Césaire

I sent you, in Martinique,
maître
,

the unfolding letter of a sail, a letter

beyond the lines of blindingly white breakers,

of lace-laden surplices and congregational shale.

I did not send any letter, though it flailed on the wind,

your island is always in the haze of my mind

with the blown-about sea-birds

in their creole clatter of vowels,
maître
among makers,

whom the reef recites when the copper sea-almonds blaze,

beacons to distant Dakar, and the dolphin's acres.

54

This page is a cloud between whose fraying edges

a headland with mountains appears brokenly

then is hidden again until what emerges

from the now cloudless blue is the grooved sea

and the whole self-naming island, its ochre verges,

its shadow-plunged valleys and a coiled road

threading the fishing villages, the white, silent surges

of combers along the coast, where a line of gulls has arrowed

into the widening harbor of a town with no noise,

its streets growing closer like print you can now read,

two cruise ships, schooners, a tug, ancestral canoes,

as a cloud slowly covers the page and it goes

white again and the book comes to a close.

INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

A

Acacia Trees, The

Adam's Song

Adios, Carenage

“After hard rain the eaves repeat their beads”

“Afternoon. Durrants. Either the lift (elevator)”

“After that hot gospeler had leveled all but the churched sky”

“After the plague, the city-wall caked with flies, the smoke's amnesia”

After the Storm

“A gaunt, gabled house”

Air

“All day I wish I was at Case-en-Bas”

“A long, white, summer cloud, like a cleared linen table”

“Along Cape Cod, salt crannies of white harbors”

“A man is leaning on a cold iron rail”

Anadyomene

“And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden.”

“A newsclip; the invasion of Biafra:”

“Anguilla, Adina”

“Anna, my daughter”

“An old lady writes me in a spidery style”

Another Life (
excerpts
)

“A panel of sunrise”

Archipelagoes

“Are they earlier, these”

Arkansas Testament, The

“Around the cold pool in the metal light”

“As for that other thing”

As John to Patmos

“As John to Patmos, among the rocks and the blue live air, hounded”

“At dusk, on the edge of the asphalt's worn-out ribbon”

“At every first communion, the moon”

“At the end of this line there is an opening door”

“At the end of this sentence, rain will begin.”

“At the Malabar Hotel Cottage”

“At the Queen's Park Hotel, with its white, high-ceilinged rooms”

“August, the quarter-moon dangles like a bugle”

“
AUGUSTE MANOIR, MERCHANT: LICENSED TO SELL
”

“Autumn's music grates. From tuning forks of branches”

“Awaking to gratitude in this generous Eden”

“A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt”

B

Barcelona

“Be happy now at Cap, for the simplest joys—”

“Behind the stained water of the lucent panes, they”

“Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true”

“Beyond the choric gestures of the olive”

“Black clippers, tarred with whales' blood, fold their sails”

“Blessed are the small farms conjugating Horace”

“Blessed Mary of the Derelicts. The church in Venice”

Blues

Bounty, The

Bounty, The (
excerpts
)

Brise Marine

“Broad sun-stoned beaches.”

C

Canto II

“Can you genuinely claim these, and do they reclaim you”

Careful Passion, A

Castaway, The

“Cautious of time's light and how often it will allow”

Cell, The

“Chasms and fissures of the vertiginous Alps”

Che

Chelsea, The

“Chicago's avenues, as white as Poland.”

Christmas Eve

City's Death by Fire, A

Codicil

“Companion in Rome, whom Rome makes as old as Rome”

Corn Goddess, The

Cove, The

Crusoe's Island

Crusoe's Journal

Cul de Sac Valley

D

Dark August

“De shepherd shrieves in Egyptian light”

Divided Child, The (
excerpts
)

Dormitory, The

“Down the Conradian docks of the rusted port”

Dread Song

E

“Each dusk the leaf flared on its iron tree”

Easter

Egypt, Tobago

Elegy (from
The Gulf
)

Elegy (from
White Egrets
)

Epitaph for the Young (
excerpt
)

Epithalamium: The Rainy Season

Estranging Sea, The (
excerpts
)

“Europe fulfilled its silhouette in the nineteenth century”

“Every street corner is Christmas Eve”

Exile

F

Far Cry from Africa, A

Fight with the Crew

Fishermen Rowing Homeward…, The

“Flare of the ibis, rare vermilion”

“Flattered by any masterful representation”

Flight
Anchors in Castries Harbor, The

Flight
Passing Blanchisseuse, The

For Adrian

Forest of Europe

“Forged from the fire of Exodus”

“Formal, informal, by a country's cast”

For the Altarpiece of the Roseau Valley Church, Saint Lucia

“For the crackle and hiss of the word ‘August,'”

Fortunate Traveller, The

Forty Acres

“From this village, soaked like a gray rag in salt water”

G

Gauguin

“Gnawing the highway's edges, its black mouth”

Goats and Monkeys

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen: Part II

“Gold dung and urinous straw from the horse garages”

Granada

“Grass, bleached to straw on the precipice of Les Cayes”

“Gray apparitions at veranda ends”

Greece

Gros-Ilet

Gulf, The

H

Hart Crane

Harvest, The

“Having measured the years today by the calendar”

“Here's what that bastard calls ‘the emptiness'—”

“He walked a bridge where”

Hic Jacet

Homage to Edward Thomas

Homage to Gregorias (
excerpts
)

Homecoming

Homecoming: Anse La Raye

Hotel Normandie Pool, The

I

“I am considering a syntax the color of slate”

Ibis

“I can sense it coming from far, too, Maman, the tide”

“If, in the light of things, you fade”

“If they ask what my favorite flower was”

“I heard them marching the leaf-wet roads of my head”

“I lay on the bed near the balcony in Guadalajara”

“Imprisoned in these wires of rain, I watch”

In a Green Night

In Amsterdam

“In autumn, on the train to Pennsylvania”

“In idle August, while the sea soft”

In Italy

In My Eighteenth Year

“In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort”

“In our upside-down hotel, in that air-conditioned”

“In their faint photographs”

“In the leathery closeness of the car through canefields”

“In the mute roar of autumn, in the shrill”

“In this dark-grained news-photograph, whose glare”

Iona: Mabouya Valley

“I once gave my daughters, separately, two conch shells”

“I pause to hear a racketing triumph of cicadas”

“I saw stones that shone with stoniness, I saw thorns”

“I sent you, in Martinique,
maître
”

“I sit high on this bridge in Laventille”

Islands

Italian Eclogues

“It depends on how you look at the cream church on the cliff”

“It is coming with the first drops mottling the hot cement”

“It's what others do, not us, die, even the closest”

“It's your country, Jim, and what”

“It was in winter. Steeples, spires”

I with Legs Crossed Along the Daylight Watch

“I with legs crossed along the daylight watch”

J

Jean Rhys

Junta

K

Kingston—Nocturne

“Koenig knew now there was no one on the river.”

Koenig of the River

“K with quick laughter, honey skin and hair”

L

“Laborie, Choiseul, Vieuxfort, Dennery”

Letter from Brooklyn, A

Letter to a Painter in England

Light of the World, The

“Like a blackbird that shot out of the daylight”

Lizard

London Afternoon, A

“Look, and you will see that the furniture is fading”

Lost Empire, The

Lost Federation, The

Love After Love

Love in the Valley

M

“Man, I suck me tooth when I hear”

Manet in Martinique

Man-O'-War Bird

Man Who Loved Islands, The

Map of the New World

Maria Concepcion & The Book of Dreams

“Marley was rocking on the transport's stereo”

Mass Man

“Merely to name them is the prose”

Metamorphoses (
excerpt
)

“Miasma, acedia, the enervations of damp”

Midsummer (
excerpts
)

Midsummer, Tobago

“Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn.”

Miramar

Moon

“Mud. Clods. The sucking heel of the rain-flinger.”

“My country heart, I am not home till Sesenne sings”

“My race began as the sea began”

N

Names

“Near our ochre pastures with real bulls, your clay one”

Negatives

“New creatures ease from earth, nostrils nibbling air”

“Night, our black summer, simplifies her smells”

Nights in the Gardens of Port of Spain

North and South

“Nothing, not the hotel's beige dankness, not”

“Now, at the rising of Venus—the steady star”

O

Oceano Nox

“O child as guiltless as the grass”

Octopus

“O Genoan, I come as the last line of where you began”

Ohio, Winter

Old New England

“‘Once Christmas coming”

“Once we have driven past Mundo Nuevo trace”

“One dawn I woke up to the gradual terror”

“On one hand, harrowed England”

“On the bright road to Rome, beyond Mantua”

“On the quays of Papeete, the dawdling white-ducked colonists”

“Our hammock swung between Americas”

“Our houses are one step from the gutter. Plastic curtains”

Out of the Depths

“Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving—”

“Over Fayetteville, Arkansas”

“Over the years the feast's details grew fainter”

P

Pact, The

Parades, Parades

Parang (from
In a Green Night
)

Parang (from
The Bounty
)

Party Night at the Hilton

Pastoral

“Perhaps if I'd nurtured some divine disease”

Pocomania

Private Journal

Prodigal, The (
excerpts
)

“Prodigal, what were your wanderings about?”

R

Raptures of the Deep

“Raw ochre sea cliffs in the slanting afternoon”

Reading Machado

“Resisting poetry I am becoming a poem.”

“Rest, Christ! from the tireless war. See, it's midsummer”

Return to Dennery, Rain

Roman Outposts

R.T.S.L.

Ruins of a Great House

S

Sailor Sings Back to the Casuarinas, The

Sainte Lucie

Saint Lucia's First Communion

“Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles”