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From this far Lyrics by Derek Walcott

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The white almonds of a statue stare
at almond branches wrestling off their shade
like a girl from her dress--a gesture rarely made
by abstract stone.
A Greek tanker passes
through the net of branches
to the drag of tractors quarrying a cliff--
in its hold, a cargo of marble heads;
from Orpheus to Onassis,
the sea has flown one flag:
white-barred waves on unalterable blue.
The sky's window rattles
at gears raked into reverse;
but no stone head rolls in the ochre dust,
in the soil of our islands no gods are buried.
They were shipped to us, Seferis,
dead on arrival.
Dawn buckles on the helmet
of raid Agamemnon.
A net is flung over the shallows;
ocean divides: a bronze door.
In the wash the trunks of warriors
roll and recede.
Great lines, Seferis, have heaved them this far.
At dusk, the man-god bleeds
face down in the veins of the sea.
The blue night hums with bees.
Every hour bores a hole in hive
of the labyrinth, at whose end
the obscene miscegenation lowers its lyre-curved horns,
and whether it is for dead stones, or the god of thorns,
we stagger the arena with leaking eyes.
The almonds hoard their shadows
as we do the shades of friends.
When a bronze leaf glints, I hear again
the torn throat in the torn shade,
then my eyes harden in a stone head.
I see them in a colonnade
of concrete wharf-piles
where a gull settles.
I hear them groaning with the tractors.
I am eating an ice cream on a hot esplanade,
in a barred blue and white vest,
in the brittle shade of a sea grape,
in the iodine reek of shallows,
watching the empty bleu port
frothing with yachts,
when a leafy wall
tosses the shadow of a pawing bull.
The fairy boat passes,
and the gull screeches its message,
opening its wings like a letter,
and the screech grows into a whirlwind
of shawled and ragged crows in a stone field.
It is during this, Seferis,
that a girl wrestling off her dress
fold with the wave like a dolphin,
that surf hides the sobbing of women,
that, in the thudding of tractors,
i hear the wooden clocks
behind the hills arena,
and the dry wrenching of the hunting dogs.
Over something-carrion,
the sun's wave buried king
vultures with ragged shawls keep circling;
i see the harpist with his eyes like clouds
i remember you holding a heavy marble head;
i see the other who invited the barbarians
into the white washed streets.
I stay with my own. I starved my hand of names,
no tan fauns leapt over my wrist,
I'll never see Peireas repeat her white name in water,
but whether my eyes will be white seeds in a bust,
or, likelier, the salt fruit of warms,
they are sockets whose hollows boast
those flashes of inward life,
from the heads thunder-lit storms.
Credits
Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

About “From this far” by Derek Walcott

Read the complete lyrics to "From this far" by Derek Walcott. On Lyrks you can follow along with the full text, explore the artist's discography, and discover related songs. The track is often categorized under Non-Music.

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