Tuesday, September 02, 2014

TUESDAY POEM | Earth by Derek Walcott





                                             EARTH 

                                             Let the day grow on you upward
                                             through your feet,
                                             the vegetal knuckles,

                                             to your knees of stone,
                                             until by evening you are a black tree;
                                             feel, with evening,

                                             the swifts thicken your hair,
                                             the new moon rising out of your forehead,
                                             and the moonlit veins of silver

                                             running from your armpits
                                             like rivulets under white leaves.
                                             Sleep, as ants

                                             cross over your eyelids.
                                             You have never possessed anything 
                                             as deeply as this. 

                                             This is all you have owned
                                             from the first outcry
                                             through forever; 

                                             you can never be dispossed. 

                                             Derek Walcott 
                                                            (from the collection 'Staying Alive - real poems for real times', edited by Neil Astley)




 ". . . It's so hard to write the poem of grief or absence, to make it approachable and fresh, and not to push the reader too hard to feel the deep upwelling ugly thing. 'candle' is powerful for its restraint and its ranging unexpectedness. For its cavernous, versatile waha that does everything except cry. . .'  Stunning commentary by Mary McCallum, this week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub. Mary's chosen poem is 'candle' by mightily-multi-talented Hinemoana Baker.

                                      '. . . The boat was a mouth, the word was a whale,
                                      the moon was a flying fish, the swoop of a letter. . .'



http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.co.nz/2014/09/candle-by-hinemoana-baker.html
Please click on the quill.

_/\_




6 comments:

  1. Wow - Claire - Walcott is so so good isn't he. Thanks for your comment about the 'candle' post - it's a wonderful poem, too. How lucky we are to be surrounded with all these words, these poets, these poems.

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  2. One of my favourites among the shorter poems of Walcott. Excellent.

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  3. Love this - Derek Walcott is wonderful - particularly loved his 'Schooner Flight' sea poem.

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  4. I just love the way this poem opens. It creates a whole feeling in those few words.

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  5. Oh what a surprise - I just tumbled on your blog, Claire! That poem is beautiful. What a wonderful meeting we had. I hope you are finding spring again in New Zealand - twice in one year, can't be bad! XX

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  6. Claire I just wrote a comment - but the wily ways of blogspot seem to have vanished it. I think I said I tumbled on your blog, what a surprise! And that poem is beautiful. What a wonderful meeting we had - and spring again now for you in New Zealand - two springtides in one year can't be bad! XX

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