Helicopters are cutlassing the wild bananas.
Between a nicotine thumb and forefinger
brittle faces crumble like tobacco leaves.
Children waddle in vests, their legs bowed,
little shrimps curled under their navels.
The old men’s teeth are stumps in a charred forest.
Their skins grate like the iguana’s.
Their gaze like slate stones.
Women squat by the river’s consolations
where children wade up to their knees,
and a stick stirs up a twinkling of butterflies.
Up there, in the blue acres
of forest, flies circle their fathers.
In spring, in the upper provinces
of the Empire, yellow tanagers
float up through the bare branches.
There is no distinction in these distances.
–1987
Anselm Keifer, Palette. 1981.
Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia, a Caribbean island, in 1930. Growing up he was trained as a painter but turned to writing instead. At age 14 he published his first poem in a local newspaper. Five years later, he borrowed $200 to print his first collection, which he distributed on street corners. His work celebrates the Caribbean and its history, and investigates the scars of colonialism. His poetry books include In a Green Night (1962), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), and White Egrets (2010). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. In his acceptance speech he said, “It is the fate of poetry to fall in love with the world, in spite of history.” He lives in St. Lucia and New York City.
Food for Thought: How does the poet contrast images of ugliness with those of beauty? Is there any distinction between them?
Notebook in the Rain 