In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
15 The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
20 While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
1. An east African ethnic group whose members, (Afrikaans). as Mau Mau fighters, conducted an eight-year 3. In big-game hunting, natives are hired to beat campaign of violent resistance against British colo-the brush, driving birds?such as ibises?and nial settlers in Kenya in the 1950s. other animals into the open. 2. Open country, neither cultivated nor forest
.
258 8 / DEREK WALCOTT
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,^
25 The gorilla wrestles with the superman. I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
30 Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?
1956,1962
From The Schooner Flight
1 Adios, Carenage'
In idle August, while the sea soft, and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim of this Caribbean, I blow out the light by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
5 to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight. Out in the yard turning grey in the dawn, I stood like a stone and nothing else move but the cold sea rippling like galvanize and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
io till a wind start to interfere with the trees. I pass me dry neighbour sweeping she yard as I went downhill, and I nearly said: 'Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,' but the bitch look through me like I was dead.
15 A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on. The driver size up my bags with a grin: 'This time, Shabine, like you really gone!' I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in the back seat and watch the sky burn
20 above Laventille2 pink as the gown in which the woman I left was sleeping, and I look in the rearview and see a man exactly like me, and the man was weeping for the houses, the streets, the whole fucking island.
25 Christ have mercy on all sleeping things! From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road to when I was a dog on these streets; if loving these islands must be my load,
4. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39). repaired. 'Adios': goodbye (Spanish). I. Waterfront where schooners are cleaned and 2. Hillside slum outside Port of Spain, Trinidad.
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THE SCHOONER FLIGHT / 2589
out of corruption my soul takes wings, 30
But they had started to poison my soul with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,3 coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole, so I leave it for them and their carnival? I taking a sea-bath, I gone down the road.
35 I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,4 a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes that they nickname Shabine, the patois0 for spoken dialect any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw when these slums of empire was paradise.
40 I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.
But Maria Concepcion was all my thought
45 watching the sea heaving up and down as the port side of dories, schooners, and yachts was painted afresh by the strokes of the sun signing her name with every reflection; I knew when dark-haired evening put on
50 her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea, sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back,
55 so I smile to myself as the bow rope untied
and the Flight swing seaward: 'Is no use repeating that the sea have more fish. I ain't want her dressed in the sexless light of a seraph,0 angel
I want those round brown eyes like a marmoset,5 and
