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“Hearing Nausicaa’s name in / every gull’s outcry”: Derek Walcott reads “Sea Grapes”

By Ernest Hilbert • January 14, 2009 • Poetry

Sea Grapes
Derek Walcott

That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean

for home, could be Odysseus,
home-bound on the Aegean;
that father and husband’s

longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like
the adulterer hearing Nausicaa’s name in
every gull’s outcry.

This brings nobody peace. The ancient war
between obsession and responsibility will
never finish and has been the same

for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now
wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since
Troy sighed its last flame,

and the blind giant’s boulder heaved the trough from
whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the
conclusions of exhausted surf.

The classics can console. But not enough.

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    Joe Milford Interviews Ernest Hilbert for the Joe Milford Poetry Show, September 24th, 2009

    About the Author

    ernest@everseradio.com'

    Ernest Hilbert

    Ernest Hilbert is founder of E-Verse Radio.

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