Derek Walcott
[Perhaps if I'd nurtured some]
[Perhaps if I'd nurtured some]
MIDSUMMER XXIX
Perhaps if I'd nurtured some divine disease,
like Keats in eternal Rome, or Chekhov at Yalta,
something that sharpened the salt fragrance of sweat
with the lancing nib of my pen, my gift would increase,
as the hand of a cloud turning over the sea will alter
the sunlight – clouds smudged like silver plate,
leaves that keep trying to summarize my life.
Under the brain's white coral is a seething anthill.
You had such a deep faith in that green water, once.
The skittering fish were harried by your will –
the stingray halved itself in clear bottom sand,
its tail a whip, its back as broad as a shovel;
the sea horse was fragile as glass, like grass, every tendril
of the wandering medusa: friends and poisons.
But to curse your birthplace is the final evil.
You could map my limitations four yards up from a beach –
a boat with broken ribs, the logwood that grows only thorns,
a fisherman throwing away fish guts outside his hovel.
What if the lines I cast bulge into a book
that has caught nothing? Wasn't it privilege
to have judged one's work by the glare of greater minds,
though the spool of days that midsummer's reel rewinds
comes bobbling back with its question, its empty hook?