From ‘The Schooner Flight’ by Derek Walcott

I swear to you all, by my mother’s milk,

by the stars that shall fly from tonight’s furnace,

that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;

I loved them as poets love the poetry

that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.

You ever look up from some lonely beach

and see a far schooner? Well, when I write

this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt;

I go draw and knot every line as tight

as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech

my common language go be the wind,

my pages the sails of the schooner Flight.

*

Derek Walcott, extract from The Schooner Flight. Photo courtesy Katina Rogers.