Derek Walcott(b. 1930)
Chapter XXXVIII
Who decrees a great epoch The meridian of Greenwich.9
Who doles out our zeal, and in which way lies our
hope In the cobbles of sinister Shoreditch,1
in the widening rings of Big Ben's iron flower,2
in the barges chained like our islands to the Thames.
Where is the alchemical corn and the light it yields
Where, in which stones of the Abbey, are incised our names3
Who defines our delight St. Martin-in-the-Fields.4
After every Michaelmas,5 its piercing soprano steeple
defines our delight. Within whose palatable vault
will echo the Saints' litany of our island people
St. Paul's salt shaker,6 when we are worth their salt.
Stand by the tilted crosses of well-quiet Glen-da-Lough.7
Follow the rook's crook'd finger to the ivied grange.8
As black as the rook is, it comes from a higher stock.
Who screams out our price The crows of the Corn Exchange.9
Where are the pleasant pastures A green baize-table.1
Who invests in our happiness The Chartered Tour.
Who will teach us a history of which we too are capable
The red double-decker's view of the Bloody Tower.2
When are our brood, like the sparrows, a public nuisance
When they screech at the sinuous swans on the Serpentine.3
The swans are royally protected,4 but in whose hands
are the black crusts of our children In the pointing sign
under the harps of the willows, to the litter of Margate Sands.5
What has all this to do with the price of fish, our salary
tidally scanned with the bank-rate by waxworks tellers6
Where is the light of the world7 In the National Gallery.
In Palladian Wren. In the City8 that can buy and sell us
the packets of tea stirred with our crystals of sweat.
W h e r e is our sublunar9 peace In that sickle sovereign
peeling the gilt from St. Paul's onion silhouette.
There is our lunar peace: in the glittering grain
of the coined estuary, our moonlit, immortal wheat,1
its white sail cresting the gradual swell of the Downs,2
startling the hare from the pillars on Salisbury Plain,3
sharpening the grimaces of thin-lipped market towns,
whitewashing the walls of Brixton,4 darkening the grain
w h e n coal-shadows cross it. Dark future down darker street.
ALAN BRWNJHN
b. 1931