an absence of ruins/ Derek Walcott

[98weeks]

The imagery is very distant, but very nice!
enjoy
m.



The Royal Palms
. . . an absence of ruins

I

Dispersing cupolas of cannon-smoke
Wreathed, like the wild parabolas of the sword
In this sea light, our islands’ architecture.
The howling mouths, the startled hair,
Stunned when the iron thunder spoke
Were never petrified in praise
Of felons, cannibals and castaways.

Here there are no heroic palaces
Netted in sea-green vines, or built
On maize savannahs the cat-thighed, stony faces
Of Egypt’s cradle, easily unriddled;
If art is where the greatest ruins are,
Our art is in those ruins we became,
You will not find in these green, desert places
One stone that found us worthy of its name,
Nor how, lacking the skill to beat things over flame,
We peopled archipelagoes by one star.

II

And those who slew us, what was their disgrace?
They are our fathers just as those they slew,
A bastard composition like the race,
Conquistador, redleg, Sephardic Jew,
Cromwellian heretics, helots reeking gin,
With disinherited dukes drawn to the womb
Of weary Africa who had to let them in,
The bronze hue of her bastards is their tomb.

Since lust is not assuaged by statuary,
This should explain the absence of the arch;
Flesh fell so fast, the swiftest actuary
Cannot record the sword’s triumphal march.
Flesh was the ravage of the phallic sword
That built its ruin in the conqueror’s blood.

III

Chained hands from exile lost whatever skills
They first possessed to pattern stone or bronze,
Knit ceremonial masks; from hand to mouth
Was the last way to share the tribal truth.
No arches praise those origins but the palms
With their Corinthian plumes and earthen plinth,
The columns of our racial labyrinth.