Islands

For Derek Walcott An island is one great eye gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse, searchlight, a wishbone compass, or counterweight to the stars. When it comes to outlook & point of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge peering out toward an archipelago of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s wings touching the tip of a high wave, out to where the brain may stumble. But when a mind climbs down from its high craggy lookout we know it is truly a stubborn thing, & has to leaf through pages of dust & light, through pre-memory & folklore, remembering fires roared down there till they pushed up through the seafloor & plumes of ash covered the dead shaken awake worlds away,& silence filled up with centuries of waiting. Sea urchin, turtle,& crab came with earthly know-how, & one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak, before everything clouded with cries, a millennium of small deaths now topsoil & seasons of blossoms in a single seed. Light edged along salt-crusted stones, across a cataract of blue water, & lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens, the last words of men buried at sea. Someone could stand here contemplating the future, leafing through torn pages of St. Augustine or the prophecies by fishermen, translating spore & folly down to taproot. The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man, the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond words. To behold a body of water is to know pig iron & mother wit. Whoever this figure is, he will soon return to dancing through the aroma of dagger’s log, ginger lily,& bougainvillea, between chants & strings struck till gourds rally the healing air, & till the church-steeple birds fly sweet darkness home. Whoever this friend or lover is, he intones redemptive harmonies. To lie down in remembrance is to know each of us is a prodigal son or daughter, looking out beyond land & sky, the chemical & metaphysical beyond falling & turning waterwheels in the colossal brain of damnable gods, a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye, born to gaze into fire. After conquering frontiers, the mind comes back to rest, stretching out over the white sand.