from The Prodigal: 12

f
I

Prodigal, what were your wanderings about?
The smoke of homecoming, the smoke of departure.
The earth grew music and the tubers sprouted
to Sesenne's singing, rain-water, fresh patois
in a clay carafe, a clear spring in the ferns,
and pure things took root like the sweet-potato vine.
Over the sea at dusk, an arrowing curlew,
as the sun turns into a cipher from a green flash,
clouds crumble like cities, the embers of Carthage;
any man without a history stands in nettles
and no butterflies console him, like surrendering flags,
does he, still a child, long for battles and castles
from the books of his beginning, in a hieratic language
he will never inherit, but one in which he writes
"Over the sea at dusk, an arrowing curlew,"
his whole life a language awaiting translation?

Since I am what I am, how was I made?
To ascribe complexion to the intellect
is not an insult, since it takes its plaid
like the invaluable lizard from its background,
and if our work is piebald mimicry
then virtue lies in its variety
to be adept. On the warm stones of Florence
I subtly alter to a Florentine
till the sun passes, in London
I am pieced by fog, and shaken from reflection
in Venice, a printed page in the sun
on which a cabbage-white unfolds, a bookmark.
To break through veils like spiders' webs,
crack carapaces like a day-moth and achieve
a clarified frenzy and feel the blood settle
like a brown afternoon stream in river Doree
is what I pulsed for in my brain and wrist
for the drifting benediction of a drizzle
drying on this page like asphalt, for peace that passes
like a changing cloud, to a hawk's slow pivot.

II

In the vale of Santa Cruz I look to the hills.
The white flowers have the fury of battle,
they lay siege to the mountains, for war
there is the tumult of the white ravines,
and the cascade's assault; they bow their plumes,
Queen Anne's lace, bougainvillea, orchid and oleander,
and they are as white as arrested avalanches,
angry and Alpine, their petals blur into
a white gust from the Matterhom or the streets of Zermatt.
Both worlds are welded, they were seamed by delight.
Santa Cruz, in spring. Deep hills with blue clefts.
I have come back for the white egrets
feeding in a flock on the lawn, darting their bills
in that finical stride, gawkily elegant,
then suddenly but leisurely sailing
to settle, but not too far off, like angels.

III

I wake at sunrise to angelic screams.
And time is measuring my grandchildren's cries
and time outpaces the sepia water
of the racing creek, time takes its leisure, cunning
in the blocked hollows of the pool, the elephantine stones
in the leaf-marked lagoon, time sails
with the soundless buzzard over the smoking hills
and the clouds that fray and change
and time waits very quiet between the mountains
and the brown tracks in the valleys of the Northern Range,
a cover of overhanging bamboo, in Maraval
where, if the bed were steeper, a brown stream races
or tries to, pooling in rocks, with great avail
for me at least, or where a range's blues
and indigo over which wide hawks sail
their shadows on the wells of Santa Cruz,
dark benedictions on the brook's muttering shale,
and the horses are slowly plunging their manes
as they climb up from the paved-with-lilies pond,
so much mythology in their unharnessed necks!
These little things take root as I add my praise
to the huge lawn at the back of the house, a field,
a bright, unaltered meadow, a small savannah
for cries and bicycles and joy-crazed dogs
bolting after pedalling boys, the crescent ghost
of the new moon showing and on the thick slopes
this forest like green billowing smoke
pierced by the flame petals of the immortelle.

IV

Petals of the flame tree against ice-cream walls
and the arches across the park with its tacit fountain,
the old idlers on the benches, this is the prose
that spreads like the shade of an immortal banyan
in front of the library, the bulk that darkens
the violin of twilight when traffic has vanished
and nearly over also the colonial regime when the wharves
cradled the rocking schooners of our boyhood to
the echo of vespers in the alien cathedral.
In the hot green silence a dragonfly's drone
crossing the scorched hill to the shade of the cedars
and spiced laurels, the lauriers canelles,
the word itself lifting the plurals of its leaves,
from the hot ground, from this page, the singeing smells.
How simple to write this after you have gone,
that your death that afternoon had the same ease
as stopping at the side of the road under the trees
to buy cassava bread that comes in two sorts
sweet and unsweetened, from the huge cauldron,
on the road between Soufrière and Canaries.
The heat collects in the depths between the ridges
and the high hawks circle in the gathering haze;
like consonants round a vowel, insistent midges
hum round noun's hexagon, and the hornet's house.
Delve in the hot, still valley of Soufrière,
the black, baking asphalt and its hedges dripping shade
and here is the ultimate nullity despite the moil
of the churning vegetation. The small church
hidden in leaves. In mid-afternoon, the halt–
then dart of a quizzical lizard across the road.
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

from The Seasons: Spring by James Thomson
James Thomson
As rising from the vegetable World
My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,
My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the Woods
Invite you forth in all your gayest Trim.
Lend me your Song, ye Nightingales! oh pour
The mazy-running Soul of Melody
Into my varied Verse! while I deduce,
From the first Note the hollow Cuckoo sings,
Read Poem
0
157
Rating:

Voyages by Hart Crane
Hart Crane
I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
Read Poem
0
132
Rating:

Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac’d suitor ‘gins to woo him.

‘Thrice fairer than myself,’ thus she began,
Read Poem
0
209
Rating:

from The Prodigal: 10 by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
I

The ground dove stuttered for a few steps then flew
up from his path to settle in the sun-browned
branches that were now barely twigs; in drought it coos
with its relentless valve, a tiring sound,
not like the sweet exchanges of turtles in the Song
of Solomon, or the flutes of Venus in frescoes
though all the mounds in the dove-calling drought
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden
John Dryden
In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
Read Poem
0
114
Rating:

The Comedian as the Letter C by Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
i
The World without Imagination

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
Of snails, musician of pears, principium
And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig
Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,
Read Poem
0
120
Rating:

The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey by Seán Ó Coileáin
Seán Ó Coileáin
I am gut sad.

I am flirting
with the green waves,
wandering the sand,
feeding reflection
into the seaweed foam.

That Shaker’s moon
is up.
Read Poem
0
74
Rating:

from The Prodigal: 14 by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
I

From a blue keg, the barrel's thumb-tuned goatskin,
the choirs of ancestral ululation
are psalms and pivot for the prodigal
in a dirt yard at Piaille, are confrontation,
old incantation and fresh sacrifice
where a ram is tethered, without the scrolled horns,
wool locks and beard of the scapegoat,
Read Poem
0
101
Rating:

Long time a child, and still a child, when years by Hartley Coleridge
Hartley Coleridge
Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,—
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Read Poem
0
114
Rating:

Spain: Anno 1492 by Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff
Torquemada. Now that Castile and Aragon in holy wedlock
are Spain,
and the last city of the Moors in Spain is Spanish
except for Moor and Jew—
about every crucifix in every market-place
and in the court itself the Jews!—
as seven centuries of Christian valor, Christian piety
triumph
Read Poem
0
99
Rating:

The March into Virginia Ending in the First Manassas (July, 1861) by Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Did all the lets and bars appear
To every just or larger end,
Whence should come the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—
Age finds place in the rear.
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
The champions and enthusiasts of the state:
Turbid ardors and vain joys
Not barrenly abate—
Stimulants to the power mature,
Preparatives of fate.

Who here forecasteth the event?
What heart but spurns at precedent
And warnings of the wise,
Read Poem
0
109
Rating:

To a Young Lady, With Some Lampreys by John Gay
John Gay
With lovers, ’twas of old the fashion
By presents to convey their passion;
No matter what the gift they sent,
The Lady saw that love was meant.
Fair Atalanta, as a favour,
Took the boar’s head her Hero gave her;
Nor could the bristly thing affront her,
’Twas a fit present from a hunter.
Read Poem
0
187
Rating:

Consolation by Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska
Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.
Read Poem
0
148
Rating:

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
Read Poem
0
141
Rating:

My Last Dance by Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
The shell of objects inwardly consumed
Will stand, till some convulsive wind awakes;
Such sense hath Fire to waste the heart of things,
Nature, such love to hold the form she makes.

Thus, wasted joys will show their early bloom,
Yet crumble at the breath of a caress;
The golden fruitage hides the scathèd bough,
Read Poem
0
109
Rating:

To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve on his Comedy Call'd the Double Dealer by John Dryden
John Dryden
Well then; the promis'd hour is come at last;
The present age of wit obscures the past:
Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ,
Conqu'ring with force of arms, and dint of wit;
Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood;
And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood.
Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur'd,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd:
Read Poem
0
94
Rating: