The Light of the World by Derek Walcott

The Light of the World

 

     Kaya now, got to have kaya now,

     Got to have kaya now,

     For the rain is falling.

     Bob Marley

 

Marley was rocking on the transport's stereo

and the beauty was humming the choruses quietly.

I could see where the lights on the planes of her cheek

streaked and defined them; if this were a portrait

you'd leave the highlights for last, these lights

silkened her black skin; I'd have put in an earring,

something simple, in good gold, for contrast, but she

wore no jewelry. I imagined a powerful and sweet

odour coming from her, as from a still panther,

and the head was nothing else but heraldic.

When she looked at me, then away from me politely

because any staring at strangers is impolite,

it was like a statue, like a black Delacroix's

Liberty leading the People, the gently bulging

whites of her eyes, the carved ebony mouth,

the heft of the torso solid, and a woman's,

but gradually even that was going in the dusk,

except the line of her profile, and the highlit cheek,

and I thought, O Beauty, you are the light of the world!

 

It was not the only time I would think of that phrase

in the sixteen-seater transport that hummed between

Gros-Islet and the Market, with its grit of charcoal

and the litter of vegetables after Saturday's sales,

and the roaring rum shops, outside whose bright doors

you saw drunk women on pavements, the saddest of all things,

winding up their week, winding down their week.

The Market, as it closed on this Saturday night,

remembered a childhood of wandering gas lanterns

hung on poles at street corners, and the old roar

of vendors and traffic, when the lamplighter climbed,

hooked the lantern on its pole and moved on to another,

and the children turned their faces to its moth, their

eyes white as their nighties; the Market

itself was closed in its involved darkness

and the shadows quarrelled for bread in the shops,

or quarrelled for the formal custom of quarrelling

in the electric rum shops. I remember the shadows.

 

The van was slowly filling in the darkening depot.

I sat in the front seat, I had no need for time.

I looked at two girls, one in a yellow bodice

and yellow shorts, with a flower in her hair,

and lusted in peace, the other less interesting.

That evening I had walked the streets of the town

where I was born and grew up, thinking of my mother

with her white hair tinted by the dyeing dusk,

and the tilting box houses that seemed perverse

in their cramp; I had peered into parlours

with half-closed jalousies, at the dim furniture,

Morris chairs, a centre table with wax flowers,

and the lithograph of Christ of the Sacred Heart,

vendors still selling to the empty streets-

sweets, nuts, sodden chocolates, nut cakes, mints.

 

An old woman with a straw hat over her headkerchief

hobbled towards us with a basket; somewhere,

some distance off, was a heavier basket

that she couldn't carry. She was in a panic.

She said to the driver: 'Pas quittez moi a terre,'

which is, in her patois: 'Don't leave me stranded,'

which is, in her history and that of her people:

'Don't leave me on earth,' or, by a shift of stress:

'Don't leave me the earth' (for an inheritance);

'Pas quittez moi a terre, Heavenly transport,

Don't leave me on earth, I've had enough of it.'

The bus filled in the dark with heavy shadows

that would not be left on earth; no, that would be left

on the earth, and would have to make out.

Abandonment was something they had grown used to.

 

And I had abandoned them, I knew that there

sitting in the transport, in the sea-quiet dusk,

with men hunched in canoes, and the orange lights

from the Vigie headland, black boats on the water;

I, who could never solidify my shadow

to be one of their shadows, had left them their earth,

their white rum quarrels, and their coal bags,

their hatred of corporals, of all authority.

I was deeply in love with the woman by the window.

I wanted to be going home with her this evening.

I wanted her to have the key to our small house

by the beach at Gros-Ilet; I wanted her to change

into a smooth white nightie that would pour like water

over the black rocks of her breasts, to lie

simply beside her by the ring of a brass lamp

with a kerosene wick, and tell her in silence

that her hair was like a hill forest at night,

that a trickle of rivers was in her armpits,

that I would buy her Benin if she wanted it,

and never leave her on earth. But the others, too.

 

Because I felt a great love that could bring me to tears,

and a pity that prickled my eyes like a nettle,

I was afraid I might suddenly start sobbing

on the public transport with the Marley going,

and a small boy peering over the shoulders

of the driver and me at the lights coming,

at the rush of the road in the country darkness,

with lamps in the houses on the small hills,

and thickets of stars; I had abandoned them,

I had left them on earth, I left them to sing

Marley's songs of a sadness as real as the smell

of rain on dry earth, or the smell of damp sand,

and the bus felt warm with their neighbourliness,

their consideration, and the polite partings

 

in the light of its headlamps. In the blare,

in the thud-sobbing music, the claiming scent

that came from their bodies. I wanted the transport

to continue forever, for no one to descend

and say a good night in the beams of the lamps

and take the crooked path up to the lit door,

guided by fireflies; I wanted her beauty

to come into the warmth of considerate wood,

to the relieved rattling of enamel plates

in the kitchen, and the tree in the yard,

but I came to my stop. Outside the Halcyon Hotel.

The lounge would be full of transients like myself.

Then I would walk with the surf up the beach.

I got off the van without saying good night.

Good night would be full of inexpressible love.

They went on in their transport, they left me on earth.

 

Then, a few yards ahead, the van stopped. A man

shouted my name from the transport window.

I walked up towards him. He held out something.

A pack of cigarettes had dropped from my pocket.

He gave it to me. I turned, hiding my tears.

There was nothing they wanted, nothing I could give them

but this thing I have called 'The Light of the World.'