The Homecoming

T

Barbara Howes

All the great voyagers return

Homeward as on an arc of thought;

home like a ruby beacon burns

As they crest wind, scale wave, soar air;

All the great voyagers return,

Though we who wait never have done

Fearing the piteous accidents,

The coral reef sharp as the bones

It has betrayed, fate’s cormorant

Unleashed, whose diving’s never done.

Even the voyager of mind

May fail beneath behemoth’s weight;

Oh, the world’s bawdy carcass blinds

All but the boldest, rots the sails

And swamps the voyaging of the mind.

But all the great voyagers return

Home like the hunter, like the hare

To its burrow; below, earth’s axle turns

To speed their coming, the following fair

Winds bless their voyage, blow their safe return.

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from The Prodigal: 12 by Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

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,

102

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