White Egrets by Derek Walcott

Author:Derek Walcott [Derek Walcott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466880511
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

15.

A London Afternoon

I

Afternoon. Durrants. Either the lift (elevator),

with shudder and rattle, its parenthesis,

or the brown bar with its glum, punctual waiter

and his whatever accent; biscuits and cheeses

with hot, broadening tea with blessing friends.

Summer London outside, guests, porter, taxis,

the consoling clichés you have come back for,

welcomed, but not absorbed, the little ecstasies

of recognition of home, almost, in the polite roar

of traffic towards dusk; here are all the props,

the elaborate breakfasts, kippers, sporting prints,

the ornate lettering on the smallest shops,

the morning papers and the sense of permanence

under every phrase. This is where it must start:

hereditary in each boy (or chap),

the stain that spreads invisibly from the heart,

like the red of Empire in a schoolroom’s map.

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