Gulf and Other Poems by Derek Walcott

Author:Derek Walcott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466880351
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A Change of Skin

[FOR LAURENCE GOLDSTRAW]

The fog, a sheepdog circling, bared

its teeth from slavering hedges

at the dark, sheepskin-collared

stranger; then coldly it grew clear

as those green, lucent panes

of England that his fear

of history was its lack. Pins

of fine rain prickled his skin’s

horror of that cold, and the bone

shuddered from deep-tutored

awe of arrogant stone,

as when dark tribes ground to his tread,

mulch-black and brown leaves seethed

nourishing England. In an air

cold as iron, he freely breathed

the exhilaration of pure hatred;

now on grey mornings, when like hair

prickling the scalp, the trees stir

memory of their irresolute temperature

now kind, now cold, he waits,

knowing its fire purifies with sweat,

for the unsubtle, unequivocal sun,

for heat that shapes his shadow sure-

ly like the blow from glare to sudden

shade, from fear to fondness of a fever

shed, like history cured of hatred,

like life of literature.

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