Omeros

by Derek Walcott

  its frock-coated porter’s coin-eyed humility;

  its corner-pub, The Rodney, with its copper bell,

  sporting prints, and brown quiet where a pint of ale,

  two bangers and mash made his fist a sea-diver

  coming up with a fortune. “It’s the Admiral

  Rob-Me, all right,” he told Maud. Much of the river

  was quietly preserved like the area-railing

  near Putney Boat-House, where garden-boxes in June

  exploded with chrysanthemums; but the ailing

  statues of lions wearied him. One afternoon,

  he so badly missed shaking the paw of his tom

  drowsing in the window-light like a regular

  lion that he cried. The bombsites had become

  cubes of blue glass and indifferent steel. Trafalgar

  was all tourists and cameras and the red roar

  of pillar-box buses. They would begin to argue

  over menus in windows. But the worst horror

  was in the voices. Caught on a traffic island,

  waiting for the sea-green light, he began to hear

  the surf of a dialect none would understand;

  it coiled in his ear-shell with its tireless moan,

  feet could not muffle it nor traffic round the Strand,

  nor a Kensington crescent remote as the moon.

  II

  After the voices faded, he heard his own voice

  growing brazen in its key from the hotel stair,

  one step above that with which he spoke to the boys

  on the estate. He searched the eyes of the waiter

  pouring breakfast coffee with a frightening rage

  at the spoon-clicking silence. Ringing the porter,

  his pitch kept wavering on the proper language

  and the correct key—not a plea, but an order.

  This tightened his jawline and increased his hatred.

  He thought of Tumbly and Scott. They’d fought the same war,

  but he limped with pride at being the walking wounded

  in the class-struggle, in the hotel’s high ranking,

  its brass-buttons and tips, and he might have ended

  that way, saluting taxis and crisply thanking

  gentlemen. The Major waited till his rage

  ebbed and, with his eyes shut, his hands behind his head,

  was ready to go back home. Through their ersatz lace

  came the surf of cars. The sailing curtains lifted.

  Level-voiced London unnerved him. He found his excuse

  in its self-rapt adoration. Steering around

  lines patiently forming at drizzling bus-queues,

  umbrellas politely revolving in its rain,

  the cold, beaded faces in raincoats and parkas,

  he shook off the old hallucination again,

  from a spun umbrella, that they were back at war.

  On wet summer afternoons that grew dark as

  February, its gutters muttered in patois

  in the indigo light that spelt a hurricane

  or thunder over Marble Arch. What he missed was

  the roar of his island’s market, palm-fronds talking

  to each other. It was one of the mysteries

  of advancing age to like those tempestuous

  gusts that hyphenated leaves on a railed walk, in-

  stead of keeping things in place and their proper use.

  He felt like a strolling statue, passing the News

  of the World, and the Thames looked smaller to his eyes.

  III

  Maud could never sleep the length of those afternoons;

  stretched out on the verandah in the chaise-longue, and

  fanning with a palmetto, deep in her cushions,

  she stopped to examine the maps along one hand.

  Dennis was sprawled out upstairs in his khaki shirt.

  In the hot breeze everything stirred like an omen.

  She knew it was coming, but when? In the inert

  pasture with its quiet trees? In the wide-open

  bay? Was its message that rooster kicking up dirt

  like a grave near her kitchen just behind the pen?

  In a donkey’s bray sawing the heat? It was not

  visible, it was only cold sweat on her brow.

  In the day’s slow yawn before it swallowed the night?

  In the mango’s leaves, the square shade under a cow?

  Whenever you want, dear God, once it is not now.

  She found herself exhausted before it was night.

  In the heat, the low biplane of a dragonfly

  buzzed the reed-wilted pond, as its rings spread the white

  languid dominion of the crowned water-lily;

  from their straw nets the orange beaks of the ginger-

  lilies gaped for rain. She knew that it was silly

  but she heard them screeching with the ceaseless hunger

  of fledglings. She watered them. She personified

  everything these days, from the archaic elegance

  of Queen Anne’s lace to the gold, imperious pride

  of the sunflower’s revolving, lion’s countenance.

  She preferred gardens to empires. Now she was tired.

  Chapter LI

  I

  He still enjoyed taking Maud to five o’clock Mass,

  backing out of the garage with the dewy stars

  sharp through black trees, the metal wet, and Maud shawled as

  if it were Ireland. Downhill, torches of roosters

  caught a hill’s edge, and the Rover’s beam would surprise

  clumps of grey workmen going to their factories,

  all waiting for the first transport down the highway

  with thermoses and construction hats in a breeze

  as nippy as early spring, the greying road empty,

  until, one morning, screeching round the cold asphalt,

  twin lights had challenged him with incredible speed,

  blinding him, until they veered and their driver called:

  “Move your ass, honky!”

  They were lucky to be spared.

  Plunkett carefully parked the Rover near a ditch.

  Maud was shaking. He kept the lights on and got out.

  “Where’re you going?” she screamed.

  “For that sonofabitch!”

  Plunkett said in the old Army voice. The transport

  had braked to a screeching stop where the workmen were

  waiting, and some of them were already inside

  when he walked up the greying road like a major

  out to bring them some discipline. One of them said:

  “Mi ’n’homme blanc-a ka venir, oui.” Meaning: “Here comes

  the white man.”

  The dawn was coming up like thunder

  through the coconut palms. Bagpipes and kettledrums

  were the only thing missing. Plunkett smiled under

  his martial, pensioned moustaches.

  “HOLD ON!” he roared.

  They froze like recruits. One with his boot in the door.

  “TILL I TALK TO THE DRIVER NO ONE GETS ABOARD!”

  The driver rammed his side open. It was Hector.

  “Are you the bloody driver?” he asked him quietly,

  close to his face. “Are you drunk? We were nearly killed!”

  The engine was on.

  “Very well, give me the key.

  Come, come on, the key,” as if to a sulking child,

  snapping his fingers. “And furthermore, I resent

  the expletive you used. I am not a honky.

  A donkey perhaps, a jackass, but I haven’t spent

  damned near twenty years on this godforsaken rock

  to be cursed like a tourist. Do you understand?”

  All the workmen were now in the van. “What de fock!”

  one yelled. “Fock da honky!” Hector held out one hand.


  It was hard as a cedar’s roots.

  “Pardon, Major,

  I didn’t know it was you.” It was only then

  that Plunkett recognized the ivory smile. Hector,

  of course, of course; he had been one of the fishermen

  and had given up his canoe for this taxi. More

  business. He steered the conversation to Helen

  cunningly and asked if she was happy. Morning

  wickered the palms’ shadows on the warming asphalt.

  He shook Hector’s hand again, but with a warning

  about his new responsibility.

  “My fault,”

  he said to Maud, turning the key in the engine.

  II

  He dropped her off at the door of the cathedral

  among other black-shawled women. The empty square

  with rusty railings guarding the Memorial

  still shone with the dew and its grass-green benches were

  glazed with it. The fountain had uttered its last sigh.

  The sidewalks were empty. He could park anywhere.

  He parked the Rover in front of the library

  with its Georgian trim and walked to the harbour.

  Alone, down Bridge Street, he caught the smell of the sea

  as the sunlight suddenly heightened the mutter

  of Mass from the cathedral, and the balcony

  uprights under which he passed rippling like water

  or the dead fountain once. One sunrise in Lisbon,

  walking along its empty wharves, he had wondered

  where in this world he and his new wife could settle

  to find some peace. At the Customs gate the old guard

  let him in, unlocking it. He saw the metal

  dazzle of the sea between rusty containers,

  then the blue port itself, and on the opposite

  headland the arches of Married Women’s Quarters

  and the old Officers’ Mess as its hill was hit

  by a salvo of light. He could hear the chuckle

  of water under the hulls of island schooners,

  and one still had a bulb on its binnacle

  in spite of the sunshine. He strolled. His hunger was

  pierced by the smell of coffee. He was repeating

  with every step of his forked shadow the same pace

  as the midshipman, centuries ago, reading

  the italics of Dutch ships by moonlight. Now peace

  swayed the creaking hulls of the schooners. His favourite

  was an old freighter welded to the wharf by rust

  and sunsets. He felt a deep tenderness for it,

  that it went nowhere at all, grimed with coal-dust

  from the back of the market, hung with old tires

  as if it had had enough of the world. It once

  had great plans for leaving, but after a few tries

  it had grown attached to the helmeted capstans

  to which it was moored and the light-surprising walls

  of its retirement. Now, in their rising leaven,

  clouds plump as dough grew fragrant as the long ovals

  of crusting bread drawn out of a Creole oven

  by spatulas longer than oars. The sunlight stuck

  to his cheek, then ran down like salt butter

  in the mouths of the loaves. Hunger gnawed his stomach

  as he marched back to the gate. It was shut, but the

  guard opened it again for him. He had to make

  the bakery before they went, the wicker-woven

  baskets emptied quickly; sometimes they’d be gone

  before he and Maud got there. His Bread of Heaven

  laced with salt butter, his private communion.

  She was at the church door. He honked, hurrying her in.

  III

  Maud held the warm bag against her stomach and she

  slapped his hand when it fumbled towards the package

  of pointed loaves. “Pig.” She smiled and stung his raw knee

  with a slap, turning away in pretended rage

  when he squeezed her thigh. “Dennis! I’ve just come from

  church! Here. Why don’t you squeeze one of these tits instead?”

  By the time they crossed the wickered road to the farm

  he had devoured two loaves of the fragrant bread

  sunlit by the butter which he always carried.

  Despite that morning’s near-accident, the old Rover

  sailed under the surf of threshing palms and his heart

  hummed like its old engine, his wanderings over,

  like the freighter rusting on its capstans. The heat

  was wide now and the shadows blacker in the rows

  of Maud’s garden beds. Their fragrance did not draw her.

  She smelt mortality in the oleanders

  as well as the orchids; in the funeral-parlour

  reek of stale water in vases. She went upstairs.

  She didn’t garden that morning. Sick of flowers.

  Their common example of bodily decay,

  from the brown old age of bridal magnolias

  to the sunflower’s empire that lasted a day.

  By Bendemeer’s stream. Nature had not betrayed her,

  she smiled, lying in her bed. On the sun-streaked floor

  the sunflower’s dish, tracking the sun like radar,

  altered the jalousies’ shadows till they meant more

  than the rays they let in. The gold wheel frightened her.

  Chapter LII

  I

  The morning Maud died he sat in the bay window,

  watching the angel-hair blow gently from her face.

  That wax rose pillowed there was his crown and wonder,

  a breeze lifting the curtains like her bridal lace.

  Seashells. Seychelles. The empire of cancer spread

  across the wrinkled sheets. Loosened from their ribbon,

  his fleet of letters sailed their mahogany bed

  close to a Macaulay and a calf-bound Gibbon,

  an empire’s bookends. His locket and his queen,

  her golden knot his sovereign, and the covered keys

  of the shawled piano she’d never play again.

  She was his orb and sceptre, the shire of his peace,

  the hedges aisling England, lanes ending in spires,

  rooks that lift and scatter from oaks threshing like seas,

  the black notes of sparrows on telegraph wires,

  all these were in his letters, in the small brass-barred

  chest next to her fingers, his voice was in each word.

  She had been reading them in their carved double-bed.

  That broke his grief. The Major stood, then staggered

  to clutch the linen, burying his face inside her.

  He rubbed their names against her stomach. “Maud, Maud,

  it’s Dennis, love, Maud.” Then he stretched beside her,

  as if they were statues on a stone tomb, so still

  he heard the groan of a sun-expanded board

  on the hot verandah, and from the roofs downhill

  a bucket rattling for water, then the dry cardboard

  rattle of breadfruit leaves on the bay-window sill.

  II

  Provinces, Protectorates, Colonies, Dominions,

  Governors-General, black Knights, ostrich-plumed Viceroys,

  deserts, jungles, hill-stations, all an empire’s zones,

  lay spilled from a small tea-chest; felt-footed houseboys

  on fern-soft verandahs, hearty Toby-jugged Chiefs

  of Police, Girl-Guide Commissioners, Secretaries,

  poppies on cenotaphs, green-spined Remembrance wreaths,

  cornets, kettledrums, gum-chewing dromedaries

  under Lawrence, parasols, palm-striped pavilions,

  dhows and feluccas, native-draped paddle-ferries

  on tea-brown rivers, statue-rehearsing lions,

&nbs
p; sandstorms seaming their eyes, horizontal monsoons,

  rank odour of a sea-chest, mimosa memories

  touched by a finger, lead soldiers, clopping Dragoons.

  Breadfruit hands on a wall. The statues close their eyes.

  Mosquito nets, palm-fronds, scrolled Royal Carriages,

  dacoits, gun-bearers, snarling apes on Gibraltar,

  sermons to sweat-soaked kerchiefs, the Rock of Ages

  pumped by a Zouave band, lilies light the altar,

  soldiers and doxies by a splashing esplanade,

  waves turning their sheet music, the yellowing teeth

  of the parlour piano, Airs from Erin played

  to the whistling kettle, and on the teapot’s head

  the cozy’s bearskin shako, biscuits break with grief,

  gold-braid laburnums, lilac whiff of lavender,

  columned poplars marching to Mafeking’s relief.

  Naughty seaside cards, the sepia surrender

  of Gordon on the mantel, the steps of Khartoum,

  The World’s Classics condensed, Clive as brown as India,

  bathers in Benares, an empire in costume.

  His will be done, O Maud, His kingdom come,

  as the sunflower turns, and the white eyes widen

  in the ebony faces, the sloe-eyes, the bent smoke

  where a pig totters across a village midden

  over the sunset’s shambles, Rangoon to Malta,

  the regimental button of the evening star.

  Solace of laudanum, menstrual cramps, the runnings,

  tinkles in the jordan, at dusk the zebra shade

  of louvres on the quilt, the maps spread their warnings

  and the tribal odour of the second chambermaid.

  And every fortnight, ten sharp on Sunday mornings,

  shouts and wheeling patterns from our Cadet Brigade.

  All spilt from a tea-chest, a studded souvenir,

  props for an opera, Victoria Regina,

  for a bolster-plump Queen the pillbox sentries stamp,

  piss, straw and saddle-soap, heaume and crimson feather,

  post-red double-deckers, spit-and-polished leather,

  and iron dolphins leaping round an Embankment lamp.

  III

  There was Plunkett in my father, much as there was

  my mother in Maud. Not just the morning-glories

  or our own verandah’s lilac bougainvilleas,

  or the splayed hands of grape-leaves, of classic stories

  on the barber’s wooden shelf, the closest, of course,

  was Helen’s, but there in that khaki Ulysses

  there was a changing shadow of Telemachus

  in me, in his absent war, and an empire’s guilt