At 20 of 4 today, Whit and I could sit on the lawn toward the sun

The grazers were delivering hay

for the horses, you could hear

them hollering to let them know

on the other side of the berm.

The sun from the pond was fresh

and sharp in our faces, the firm

ground was fragrant and warm

from an overnight rain. The 
branches stood out white in the 
reflection overhead, and still, 
like the feathers at his flanks, 
but alert, directed, as the incline 
of his shoulders. When we came 
inside, I turned to this page

in Derek Walcott's recent White 

Egrets ~

A dun day brightening, clouds like grey flannel,

but, more than the usual, occasional sail,

a grey-hulled tanker anchored in mid-channel,

hazed by the distance and a sunlit drizzle.

They never pause going further north, or else they seem

to wait until I silently send up a flare

to signal my lifelong distress, wave flailing arms

against such paradisal luck at being stuck here,

among scuttling crabs and the ribbed hulks of palms

looking like frozen detonations, each

ghostly anchored tanker is a young man's dream

of flight, adrift in all the ports of the world

where he has left his name scrawled on a beach,

hiding in ramshackle harbours with a white beard

like a sea urchin, a skin cracked like leather:

that when masts crack and lightning bolts are hurled

he would have seen the world in its worst weather,

quiet as the tanker grazing in midstream.

If you have just come to this page

you may not know, Whit is the name

of an English Cocker Spaniel, my

dog. We seldom co-operate on an

entry here, but the character of

the day is what did it; and this

we always share.

We wish all visitors comfort on

this night. You know, we can

hear your peaceful gathering

past the berm.

Derek Walcott

White Egrets

  40.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010©

iv  Jakob Wiechmann