Untitled (no. 54)
This page is a cloud between whose fraying edges
a headland with mountains appears brokenly
then is hidden again until what emerges
from the now cloudless blue is the grooved sea
and the whole self-naming island, its ochre verges,
its shadow-plunged valleys and a coiled road
threading the fishing villages, the white, silent surges
of combers along the coast, where a line of gulls has arrowed
into the widening harbour of a town with no noise,
its streets growing closer like print you can now read,
two cruise ships, schooners, a tug, ancestral canoes,
as a cloud slowly covers the page and it goes
white again and the book comes to a close.
About this poem
This poem, representing Saint Lucia, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.
Learning Resources
St Lucia: The Written World
A classroom resource using the poem Untitled no.54 by Derek Walcott. Activities in this resource are aimed at pupils in upper secondary school (S4–S6).
