Mahogany
for Derek Walcott
Old friend, I admit I do not know what the light
was like on your island, when, listening to the sea’s
murmur, you read dreams and visions
into your body; these alien myths doing
the imagination’s work of mutating into
your birth language. What business did you have
with Homer and the heroes; what erasure
would turn Helen into an object of nativist
affection? No, that first fantasy and obsession
of constant erections, the hard, shallow pain
of guilt that the clergy call weakness;
I do not know this language. Call it poor
schooling. Or maybe it is something else:
the curse of constant questioning, of wondering
what it is to have in my head the deep
sound of chattering creatures rising
from the broken ground, the quick
burst of lightning over my wood and water city,
where from my window I could see the stern faces
of angels; they talked no Greek, and hummed
the mutated tongue of my ancestors. I am not
falling, wings melting; I am not holding
dreams of some alien sky. No, all my haunting
is earth-grounded and sounds like quick palms beating
the taut hide of wild beasts, tanned and stretched
over the sonorous wood, good, mahogany wood.
