Golden Eye
Not knowing what the morning brooded on Below her cowl of gathering cloud, the splayed Fingers of breadfruit and wild plantain waiting, Beggarly, for the still drop, 'presaging rain,' But more than rain of which to be afraid, A time threatened with thunder and with hating, I waited as the garden, one by one, Deliberately set her primal signs: A guilty lizard lurched towards its stone, Emptying the air of all but the last lines Of anis and sweet dove. I watched it grope Through the grey light as if the whole creation Crept on its guts without the strength to hope; The rainflies seemed bewildered by their maze Of perfect freedom; past a windless gate, A tethered horse seemed strangled on its rope. It seemed, in short, another of those days When death grows life-like, and life seems about Nothing, no, really, nothing. Then, like a shout The sun blazed suddenly, and it is what Appears more pointless by blind contradiction, But what we need to bear our double fiction-- The inward glory of the idiot.
DEREK WALCOTT
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