Derek Walcott(b. 1930)
Nights in the Gardens of Port of Spain
Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells
into a village; she assumes the impenetrable
musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat,
her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells,
coals of gold oranges, braziers of melon.
Commerce and tambourines increase her heat.
Hellfire or the whorehouse: crossing Park Street,
a surf of sailors' faces crests, is gone
with the sea's phosphoresence; the boites-de-nuit6
tinkle like fireflies in her thick hair.
Blinded by headlamps, deaf to taxi klaxons,horns
she lifts her face from the cheap, pitch oil flare
towards white stars, like cities, flashing neon,
burning to be the bitch she must become.
As daylight breaks the coolie turns his tumbril7
of hacked, beheaded coconuts towards home.