I
I left for the subway and there were people
standing on the steps as if he knew
something I know. Cold War Era,
fallout. I could see
Avenue was deserted, all of it, and I thought
birds had left the cities and a plague of silence
covering your arteries, in the war
had fought and lost and nothing vague or subtle
's in New York this terrible abyss.
The insistent roar of a speaker warned
the stragglers, perhaps lovers stroll,
that the world was going to end this morning
no one at work in the Sixth and Seventh Avenue
perspective in that horrific and unexplained.
was not way to die, but neither was life.
Finally, if burned, at least it was in New York.
II
In New York people are in a sitcom.
I appear in a English soap opera, a
where an old man with hair like a heron
invisible penalty makes him tremble, an affliction obscene,
and has a secret until his face betrays
wrinkles which his fiction reveals parentheses
for deep shame itself. Hey, it's the old story
quixotic a heart that never stops in its efforts
no matter what it faces. one of those things that nobody
break your heart, or even a colonel
donkey horse is released during loading,
a battle that will not statue. Is hell
common love, unrequited. Watch herons tiring march
which disheveled troops, banners
tied trailing white are the great plague
pale an old man in his memoirs, written songs
to spread their wings and open secrets .
III
Who here has taken my typewriter, I
has become a musician without his piano
that it presents a clear gap and grotesque
as another spring? I sprout veins, tired
poetry I am black wire bin.
Visible are the notes: antennas
sparrows fill as staves, and was in the spring,
roofs are cooler and the great gray river
by slipping a vessel, imposing that Mount
winter, as the years progress imperceptible
accumulated. There is no reason to forgive
so I searched myself. Lies behind the hatred,
back my longing for Italy, there blowing snow,
acquitted and graying a chain of
knees on the outskirts of Milan. Through the window I look
to the whistle of a bird spring start
crazy, but I feel strange work
hands without my machine and his music faded. No words
transatlantic for Hudson, for scabies
the roofs clear of snow. Or verses, or birds.
IV. THE GOOD LIFE CAFE
If sometimes I fall into a grizzled
quiet sitting at a table with red tablecloth tables
coffee on the terrace of La Buena Vida, traffic
Sunday at the Village is silent and smooth which moth
be working in a warehouse, is due to age,
and it's hard to admit it, or, indeed, to think.
persist in me rages, and though my anger at home
is illogical, diabetic, my love has not waned despite
I shake your hand, but not on this page.
Very healthy is my lust, but if by chance
all my towers are dried to crumble,
that bend the reeds and rushes with the euphoria
my pen Vieuxfort way, the lemongrass
white sun and sea in the bay breaking
Praslin, it's all in the
grace consort that death will one day tear of the hands
today on this tablecloth tables in this good place.
Translation Luis Ingelmo
Derek Walcott (Castries, Santa Lucia, 1930) is a poet, playwright and painter. In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Walcott is the author of a vast work that includes more than fifteen books of poetry and over thirty plays. Among his many titles include Another Life (1973), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), The Arkansas Testament (1987) and Omeros (1990), based on the epic poem Odyssey .
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These poems belong to his latest book, White Egrets (2010), which arrives tomorrow at English bookstores in Translation Luis Ingelmo With the title of White Egrets . We thank the translators and editors Bartleby their kind permission to offer this preview of the book flyer reasons.
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