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    The Arkansas Testament
    The Arkansas Testament
    The Arkansas Testament
    Ebook127 pages56 minutes

    The Arkansas Testament

    By Derek Walcott

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    About this ebook

    Derek Walcott's eighth collection of poems, The Arkansas Testament, is divided into two parts--"Here," verse evoking the poet's native Caribbean, and "Elsewhere." It opens with six poems in quatrains whose memorable, compact lines further Walcott's continuous effort to crystallize images of the Caribbean landscape and people.

    For several years, Derek Walcott has lived mainly in the United States. "The Arkansas Testament," one of the book's long poems, is a powerful confrontation of changing allegiances. The poem's crisis is the taking on of an extra history, one that challenges unquestioning devotion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 9, 2014
    ISBN9781466880313
    The Arkansas Testament
    Author

    Derek Walcott

    Derek Walcott nació en 1930 en Claistres, capital de la antigua colonia británica de Santa Lucía, una isla en las Pequeñas Antillas. Hijo de un pintor británico que murió cuando él contaba un año de edad y nieto de esclavos, a esta mezcla de culturas hay que añadir que su familia fuera protestante en una comunidad donde predominaba el catolicisimo. Estudió en el University College of the West Indies. Es fundador de Trinidad Theater Workshop, y autor de numerosas obras de teatro y libros de poesía. Entre sus obras traducidas al castellano figuran: Islas, El testamento de Arkansas, La voz del crepúsculo, La abundancia. En cuanto a Omeros, está considerada como su obra maestra y fue galardonada con el premio W. H. Smith. En 1992 le fue concedido el Premio Nobel. Foto © Lisbeth Salas

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      Book preview

      The Arkansas Testament - Derek Walcott

      HERE

      The Lighthouse

      I

      Under his photographer’s shroud,

      the mountain facing our town

      focussed the sunset, pressed a cord—

      all the street lamps flashed on.

      I swivel his creaking set

      of postcards fifty years later:

      the lighthouse, a silhouette

      of sloops on fiery water.

      Stars pierce their identical spots

      over Castries; they repeat

      those to-be-connected dots

      in a child’s book, which I complete

      lamp by lamp up to La Place.

      A night with white rum on its breath

      walks with me at funeral pace

      to lengthen the town. Underneath

      the market’s arc lamp, a crowd

      is heckling some speaker. A face

      peers at me, then loosens its screwed

      squint. Shouts. The hand-pumping farce

      of old times! From the headland,

      briefly catching the gusty wicks

      of black sea grapes, the minute hand

      of the luminous dial sticks

      at the New Jerusalem Bar.

      I order a flask of Old Oak.

      The crowd follows a different star

      now, but with an old patois joke

      he unscrews the cap with a squint,

      then gargles the politician’s

      harangue. In no time, I’m bent

      double with laughter. Once,

      he could lift hysterical fans

      on the hook of an eyebrow. Their noise

      is now for the speaker. Black hands

      in a corner slap down dominos.

      Wiping wet eyes with wet palms,

      aching from all those distraught

      recollections in double rums,

      we split up on the dark street.

      I to the black promontory

      of Vigie, the dots sprinkled on

      in its villas. He to a glori-

      ous piss, and a sleep. A full moon

      rose at the end of the road,

      minting the harbour with scales.

      A coin, tossed once overhead,

      that stuck there, not heads or tails.

      The road, held up to its light

      would show, like a negative,

      the days I walked there; I recite

      to that zero all I believe.

      By the airport, across dim grave-

      stones, the seraphic beam revolves

      its white lance. Shawled waves

      spread the lace of altar cloths.

      From wayside bushes, a girl’s

      laughter. A lit shack. Your kerosene

      lamp, Philomene, that a Bible’s

      thin pages of calico screen.

      Unaging moonlight falls

      on the graves; penknives of grass

      incise other initials

      on scarred desks that were ours.

      But he, that lovely actor

      lost in the post office! Stripped.

      A superfluous character

      written out of the script.

      Apart from one trip abroad,

      he stayed here fifty years. Fifty.

      He moves with his island, the blade

      of the lighthouse dips in the sea.

      So, when some street lamp echoed

      our ring of boys breaking up,

      was the moon, rolled from its cloud,

      the dice in a gambler’s cup

      that sent him home to a boy’s

      daydreams on a crowded bed?

      Tonight I laughed at the voice,

      not the graying, socketed head.

      Does any pattern connect

      the domino dots of these stars

      with the black slabs ranged erect

      in the palms of those gamblers?

      In my room, the air conditioner’s

      freezing. It drips. Its racked hum

      excludes you, Philomene, and the stars

      in your coal pot. The heat of home.

      As soon as its noise rattles off,

      the surf, or a frenzy of palms,

      hisses, "You had losses. Enough.

      You can’t hold them all in your arms.

      "For more care in the craft of verse,

      kneel, for the sand’s moonlit linen.

      For hills that ignore the moon’s curse

      and sleep with their window open.

      "Sleep, sleep. Tomorrow, the dread

      of what may drop out of the blue."

      I cannot, the levelling blade

      flashes on faces I knew.

      The house where we used to live,

      its vine-twined verandah gone,

      is a printery now; not a leaf

      will curl from its pillars again.

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