"And through the whole appearance runs some continuity" iii

This innocuous boy, whom we have seen before, bore the name David, and a middle name drawn from his mother's family, implicating him in privilege. He found this easy to wear as a dis-creet initial, much to his advantage. On his father's side, notoriety also would have attended his name, except for its diffusion into so many families. He was able to be, and was, a boy about one boy, although firmly embodying a principle he drew from a founder of his fortune. This date is his birthday, and this posting opens what one knows to be his favourite gift, after life. But what of that principle, what had been its tool?

"The journal that does nothing 

but paddle along with public opinion, 

without breasting the current of popular errors, 

is of no value -- none whatever."

Each year, his father would find a time to be alone with him to ask, What can I give you, for your birthday? This early-selected present came to represent one of his father's most cherished in-timations of fulfillment, in the scant years they knew each other, and for the many, after the boy had been taken away under a cruder imprint, of folly, vanity, and popular error. 

If it remains a sweet mystery to this day, which has simply to be preserved, what this boy saw in his birthday present, no one can doubt what his father saw. It isn't to intrude upon their rapport - of such expired significance - that one celebrates this day. It's that there's stuff of their kind to be said while men are living.

If, in the light of things, you fade

real, yet wanly withdrawn

to our determined and appropriate

distance, like the moon left on

all night among the leaves, may

you invisibly delight this house;

O star, doubly compassionate, who came

too soon for twilight, too late

for dawn, may your pale flame

direct the worst in us

through chaos

with the passion of

plain day.

San Marino, photo ca 1955

Remark of a publisher

Publisher's first press

Document of the U.S. Navy

Yosemite, photo 1952

Derek Walcott

Star

  The Gulf and Other Poems, 1969©

  Collected Poems, 1948-1984

The Noonday Press

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986©

Photo rights reserved