After the Storm

There are so many islands! As many islands as the stars at night on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken like falling fruit around the schooner Flight. But things must fall,and so it always was, on one hand Venus,on the other Mars; fall,and are one,just as this earth is one island in archipelagoes of stars. My first friend was the sea.Now,is my last. I stop talking now.I work,then I read, cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast. I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work,I study the stars. Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam as the deck turn white and the moon open a cloud like a door,and the light over me is a road in white moonlight taking me home. Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea. Derek Walcott