The Schooner 'Flight'
1. Adios, Carenage
In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Caribbean, I blow out the light
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.
Out in the yard turning grey in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbour sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly said:
"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard",
but the bitch look through me like I was dead.
A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on.
The driver size up my bags with a grin:
"This time, Shabine, like you really gone!"
I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in
the back seat and watch the sky burn
above Laventille pink as the gown
in which the woman I left was sleeping,
and I look in the rearview and see a man
exactly like me, and the man was weeping
for the houses, the streets, that whole fucking island.
Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when I was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load,
out of corruption my soul takes wings,
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival --
I taking a sea-bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.
But Maria Concepcion was all my thought
watching the sea heaving up and down
as the port side of dories, schooners, and yachts
was painted afresh by the strokes of the sun
signing her name with every reflection;
I know when dark-haired evening put on
her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea,
sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh,
that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting.
Is like telling mourners round the graveside
about resurrection, they want the dead back,
so I smile to myself as the bow rope untied
and the Flight swing seaward: "Is no use repeating
that the sea have more fish. I ain't want her
dressed in the sexless light of a seraph,
I want those round brown eyes like a marmoset, and
till the day when I can lean back and laugh,
those claws that tickled my back on sweating
Sunday afternoons, like a crab on wet sand."
As I worked, watching the rotting waves come
past the bow that scissor the sea like silk,
I swear to you all, by my mother's milk,
by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace,
that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;
I loved them as poets love the poetry
that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.
You ever look up from some lonely beach
and see a far schooner? Well, when I write
this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt;
I go draw and knot every line as tight
as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech
my common language go be the wind,
my pages the sails of the schooner Flight.
But let me tell you how this business begin.
Commentary
Section 1 of “The Schooner ‘Flight’”, from “The Star-Apple Kingdom”, 1980.
“The Schooner ‘Flight’” is a truly marvellous poem. Walcott/Shabine’s
odyssey through the past and present of the Caribbean is rich in symbolism and history; it’s full of wonderfully quotable truths:
"I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."
But for me, what makes the poem special is its language. Walcott begins in
stately, flowing English, but as the lines go by, the cadence of the Caribbean seeps into his verse like summer sunshine, until his words are “soaked in salt”, his “pages the sails of the schooner Flight”. Like I said, truly marvellous.
— Thomas
Moreover
Is it plagiarism to reproduce one’s own work? Or merely laziness? Either way, it doesn’t bother me overmuch :). Here’s part of my commentary to a previous Walcott poem on the Minstrels; much of what I wrote about “Midsummer, Tobago” (Poem #993) applies equally well to today’s poem:
Walcott’s poems are about voyages. Not necessarily physical ones; he’s equally concerned with the links that connect past and present, and the journeys of the mind between them. He fills his verse with ruminations on the nature of memory and the creative imagination, the history, politics and landscape of the West Indies, his own life and loves, and his enduring awareness of time and death. These themes are explored with insight and tact; they are also, in Walcott’s hands, infused with the rarest of qualities, a sense of place.
Walcott’s poems are excellent proof of the fact that it is possible to write “poetically” using free verse. His language is elegant and evocative and never forced; his merging of various linguistic influences (the vibrant Creole of his native Caribbean, the stately Latin and Greek of the classics,the workaday English of his Boston years) gives his poetry a richness and texture lost to many more traditional poets, while the absence of formal structure gives it a suppleness equal to the demands of his themes.
— Thomas