Our valentine

for Tom
in The Glass Menagerie

..


The second Adam since the fall,
His germinal
Corruption held the seed
Of that congenital heresy that men fail
According to their creed.


Craftsman and castaway,
All heaven in his head
He watched his shadow pray
Not for God's love but human love instead.

We came here for the cure
Of quiet in the whelk's centre,
From the fierce, sudden quarrel,
From kitchens where the mind,
Like bread, disintegrates in water,




To let a salt sun scour
The brain as harsh as coral,
To bathe like stones in wind,
To be, like beast or natural object, pure.


..





Derek Walcott

Crusoe's Island
  The Castaway and
    other Poems, 1965©
Collected Poems, 1948-1984
The Noonday Press
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986©