Dark August Poem by Derek Walcott
Dark August
So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.
Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.
She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,
she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly
to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,
so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,
all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then
I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.
Powerfully emotional poem. It suprised me in the end how much I liked it. Personifying nature is usually such a facile trick to create false parallels between the complexity of human thought and emotion and the incomprehensible otherness of nature. But Walcott uses the device here to get at, to coax out, to try and shine a light on a brooding, difficult side of rejection and loss, anticipation and hope. He turns the personification of nature into a projection of his inner feelings with a delicacy that is heart-wrenching. The personification in fact remains a veil to protect him, his vulnerability, from being stated too unequivocally, too bald-faced. It allows the brooding sadness and hope to be expressed from behind a film of reflective, soothing balm or salve. The images are exquisite, palpable, breathing with the life of the man's expectations and perfectly framed in the cold objectivity of nature. Nature that supplies us home and hearth, health and happiness. Or takes it away without a thought of it affects us personally.
This is beautiful poetry that flows in a majestic way with the sister- the sun. so that when you emerge, my sister, parting the beads of the rain, with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness, .. The sun comes out with flowers and forgiveness. Beautiful stanza. Very nice.
This is a beautiful poem. It's about loving someone you hold special in your heart. You wish it were possible to repair their broken yesterdays and tomorrows. The sad part is you can not.
There is a mistake in this. Seriously no one else noticed?
It sounds like an incest in a way and its weirding me out. I wish he hadnt called sun his sister.
Exquisitely beautiful portrayal of nature in the August rains which brings so much deligt in life. Thanks. so that when you emerge, my sister, parting the beads of the rain, with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/19/2024 12:30:02 AM # 1.0.0.1119
But I am learning slowly to love the dark days, the steaming hills, the air with gossiping mosquitoes, - - -This is pure writing genius at work here. The entire poem is full of perfect line after perfect line