Saturday commute clxiii: The walk

Cynical counsel soiled the land again

today, as the President of the United

States teased the People with bon-bon

treats of temporary mercy for his fav-

orite whipping-boy, his captive con-

stituent without papers. Yes. His own

constituents are all persons subject

to the equal protection of our laws.

He does not understand this. He does

not understand anything having to do

with his Office. For each reluctant

day we share or suppress conscious-

ness of this affront, its cost, its

ignominy in humanity's helpless wit-

ness, his fattening on the nation's

humiliation is protected by no law,

but by a Party which claims, lions

in secured cages, to find no wrong.

The path through this wilderness re-

veals itself as a caravan, correct-

ing disbelief and passive torment.

An internal migration, overdue, is

under way, approaching clearing.

     After hard rain the eaves repeat their beads,

     those trees exhale your doubt like mantled tapers,

     drop after drop, like a child's abacus

     beads of cold sweat file from high tension wires,

     pray for us, pray for this house, borrow your neighbor's

     faith, pray for this brain that tires,

     and loses faith in the great books it reads,

     after a day spent prone, hemorrhaging poems,

     each phrase peeled from the flesh in bandages,

     arise, stroll on under a sky

     sodden as kitchen laundry,

     while the cats yawn behind their window frames,

     lions in cages of their choice,

     no further, though, than your last neighbor's gates

     figured with pearl. How terrible is your own

     fidelity, O heart, O rose of iron!

     . . .

Derek Walcott

The Gulf and Other Poems

  The Walk

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969©

Origins of Wednesday lxxxvii: Close calls we have known

    One can just hear the guffaws

    of the actuarily deprived, at

    the sight of this antiquarian

    call box, stuffed full with a

    single listener, not a speak-

    er button to be found. On the

    other hand the luxuriant sup-

    ply of cord permits a grovel-

    ling on the paving for spills

    of coins and pencils and oth-

    er accessories of documenting

    a purchased conversation. The

    closest call of this type I'm

    aware of, this week, was that

    escape from lunch at the Ex-

    active Mansion to work a deal

    to bail its tenant out. Wrong

    way to exit that predicament;

    on the other hand, nice save.

Presidentially dealing with human life

    Yes, there is a sound

    to it; and one cannot

    forget what it means.

May 18, 1963

Sunday nibbled sleeve ii

Have you noticed? Our satirists

are doing their best to beat

more dust of hilarity from the

grounded magic carpet of the

New American Government. But an

appetite which has expired is a

tough one to appease; and one

can't be sure it's the fault,

say, of Alexandra or Gail that

evidently even they have seen 

the corpse. If the first duty

of a menace is to be credible,

the first one of despotism is

to hold the pose for Voltaire.

Heaven knows, Palm Beach always

had been somewhat thus. A com- 

munity founded by migration is

never going to resemble one in

place before rails. More and

more the pretenses of the NAG

recall ever more loudly this in-

teresting tardiness in its path-

etic fumblings for greatness, as

if it were just noise and steam.

And yet, earnestness claims per-

haps the heaviest toll. The four

dollar magazine cover of the week,

suspiciously possibly of the year,

is not of a ruinous goon, but the

gathering of reluctant faces, all

bearing a set and sodden stamp of

being overcharged for the circus.