The poem below is based on a reading of the works of the Saint Lucian poet, Derek Walcott (1930-2017), winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Time for words
What is time
in the context of universe
and what is verse
the unified voice of poetry
but an opportunity
to live love explicitly
under the star-speckled sky
how the river wearies
slows
grows sluggish
deposits silt on its bed
is swallowed within
the immense depths
of the rapacious sea
Always time and the river
and clusters of lovers
clinging to each other
in the darkness
and in the light
and in the forest
the heavy seas of foliage
tossing in the storm winds
the air thick with pollen
and occasional blossom
and sweeping skirts of rain
penetrating the soil
as day bleeds into night
the petty pace that creeps
and the poetry of it all
and the words that bind
our lives together
so that we sail through time
on a raft of significant sense
abrupt angels riding
the turbulence of our dreams
and here and there in our wake
the signatures of love
and intermittent accounts of accurate distress
when we find ourselves walled in
by the architectures of isolation
Time
the slow drip drip of words
the slow exhalation of breath
time that is our birth and our death
John Lyons
