The Equinox

Heavy with salt, and warm

And damp from the Caribbean,

Like a wrestler's body

Muscled under its sweat;

Sounding a deep alarm

That shrills to a paean,

It charges the shuddering spit

Where the rivers have met.

Under its whirling cloak

The hummocks and houses are shrunken

To figures of fear

In the blue-green daylight-dark.

Only a dwarfed sea-oak

Leans truculent, drunken,

Brandishing terrible arms

That wind-bludgeons leave stark.

From the demoniac vault,

Gargantuan sledges

Crash to the huddling roofs

Until frail timbers start.

Then, thundering to the assault

Like surf on the ledges,

The weight of the wind drives through

And rends them apart.

DuBose Heyward

Now the palmettoes that lash

On the southernmost beaches,

Thrill to the shout of the storm,

And sing through the rain.

Remembering typhoons that smash

Along tropical reaches,

They batter the winds with great hands,

And are happy again.

DuBose Heyward