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  • Untitled (no. 54)
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Untitled (no. 54)

Derek Walcott

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.


Derek Walcott

from White Egrets (London: Faber and Faber, 2010)

Reproduced by kind permission of the publishers.

Tags:

clouds islands reading Saint Lucia seashore sonnets

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

SQA Key: National 5        Higher
  • 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).
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