Section: «Poems»

Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings: artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.); a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").

Not In This World To See His Face

Not in this world to see his faceSounds long, until I read the placeWhere this is said to beBut just the primer to a lifeUnopened, rare, upon the..

© Emily Dickinson

The Season of Phantasmal Peace

Then all the nations of birds lifted togetherthe huge net of the shadows of this earthin multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,stitching and..

© Derek Walcott

From 'Omeros'

BOOK SIXChapter XLIVIIn hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez,the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of canedown the archipelago's..

© Derek Walcott

A Lesson for This Sunday

The growing idleness of summer grassWith its frail kites of furious butterfliesRequests the lemonade of simple praiseIn scansion gentler than my..

© Derek Walcott

Ruins Of A Great House

though our longest sun sets at right declensions andmakes but winter arches,it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, andhave our light in..

© Derek Walcott

The Bounty

[for Alix Walcott]iBetween the vision of the Tourist Board and the trueParadise lies the desert where Isaiah's elationsforce a rose from the sand...

© Derek Walcott

The Fist

The fist clenched round my heartloosens a little, and I gaspbrightness; but it tightensagain. When have I ever not lovedthe pain of love? But this..

© Derek Walcott

The Star-Apple Kingdom

There were still shards of an ancient pastoralin those shires of the island where the cattle dranktheir pools of shadow from an older sky,surviving..

© Derek Walcott

In the Village

II came up out of the subway and there werepeople standing on the steps as if they knewsomething I didn't. This was in the Cold War,and nuclear..

© Derek Walcott

Coral

This coral's hape ecohes the handIt hollowed. ItsImmediate absence is heavy. As pumice,As your breast in my cupped palm.Sea-cold, its nipple rasps..

© Derek Walcott

Pentecost

Better a jungle in the headthan rootless concrete.Better to stand bewilderedby the fireflies' crooked street;winter lamps do not showwhere the..

© Derek Walcott

R.T.S.L. (1917-1977)

As for that other thingwhich comes when the eyelid is glazedand the wax gleamfrom the unwrinkled foreheadasks no more questionsof the dry..

© Derek Walcott

Parang

Man, I suck me tooth when I hearHow dem croptime fiddlers lie,And de wailing, kiss-me-arse flutesThat bring water to me eye!Oh, when I t'ink how from..

© Derek Walcott

Koening Of The River

Koening knew now there was no one on the river.Entering its brown mouth choking with liliesand curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shalloppast..

© Derek Walcott

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 smallover the ocean..

© Derek Walcott

Sabbaths, W.I.

Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday,in all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleepingthose volcanoes like ashen roses, or the..

© Derek Walcott

In The Virgins

You can't put in the ground swell of the organfrom the Christiansted, St.Croix, Anglican Churchbehind the paratrooper's voice: 'Turned copafter..

© Derek Walcott

Codicil

Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,one a hack's hired prose, I earnme exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,tan, burnto slough..

© Derek Walcott

Dark August

So much rain, so much life like the swollen skyof this black August. My sister, the sun,broods in her yellow room and won't come out.Everything goes..

© Derek Walcott

The Glory Trumpeter

Old Eddie's face, wrinkled with river lights,Looked like a Mississippi man's. The eyes,Derisive and avuncular at once,Swivelling, fixed me. They'd..

© Derek Walcott

Egypt, Tobago

There is a shattered palmon this fierce shore,its plumes the rusting helm-et of a dead warrior.Numb Antony, in the torporstretching her inertsex near..

© Derek Walcott

A Far Cry From Africa

A wind is ruffling the tawny peltOf Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.Corpses are scattered through a..

© Derek Walcott

Forest Of Europe

ayed,when, in his forest of barbed-wire branches,a prisoner circles, chewing the one phrasewhose music will last longer than the leaves,whose..

© Derek Walcott

After The Storm

There are so many islands!As many islands as the stars at nighton that branched tree from which meteors are shakenlike falling fruit around the..

© Derek Walcott

The Sea Is History

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,in that gray vault. The sea. The seahas locked them up. The sea is..

© Derek Walcott