Verandah

.

This poem by Derek Walcott originally appeared in the June 1965 edition of The London Magazine, alongside poetry by John Betjeman and fiction by Nadine Gordimer.

.

Only a pure and virtuous soul
Like a seasoned timber, never gives,
But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then, chiefly lives.
               – Herbert

Frail, ghostly loungers at verandah ends,
busher, ramrod colon,
your age in ashes, its coherence gone,

planters whose tears were marketable gum, whose voices
scratch the twilight like dry fronds
gilt with reflection,

middlemen, usurers whose art
kept an empire in the red,
colonels hard as the commonwealth’s greenheart,

upholders of Victoria’s china seas
lapping embossed around a drinking mug,
bully-boy roarers at the white Empire club,

gone all your gold and scarlet jubilees,
to the tarantara of the bugler, the sunset furled
round the last post,

‘the flamingo colours’ of a fading world,
a ghost steps from you, my grandfather’s ghost!
Rooted from some green English shire,

you sought a Roman
end in suicide by fire;
your mixed son gathered your charred, blackened bones,

in a child’s coffin, sire,
and buried them himself on a strange coast.
Why do I raise you up? Because

your house has voices, even your burnt house
cries with unguessed, lovely inheritors,
your genealogical rooftree survives

like blackened timber with green, little lives,
because I ripen for your twilight, sir, I dream
I’m singed in that sea-crossing, steam

towards that ancestral, vaporous world whose souls
like pressured trees bring diamonds out of coals,
because

those sparks pitched from your burning house are stars,
you are the man my father loved and was.
Whatever love you suffered makes amends

within them, father. I climb up your stair,
I stretch a darkening hand to greet them there,
those frail, mute friends

who share with you your last inheritance
of earth, our shrine and pardoner,
shy, ghostly loungers at verandah ends.

.

.

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.

---

To discover more content exclusive to our print and digital editions, subscribe here to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry.