I read, I travel, I become - Derek Walcott

Why couldn't they love the place, same way, together,
the way he always loved her, even with his sore?
Love Helen like a wife in good and bad weather,

in sickness and in health, its beauty in being poor?
The way the leaves loved her, not like a pink leaflet
printed with slogans of black people fighting war?

History was fact,
History was a cannon, not a lizard; De Grasse

leaving Martinique, and Rodney crouching to act
in the right wind. Iounalo, my royal arse!
Hewanorra, my hole! Was the greatest battle

in naval history, which put the French to rout,
fought for a creature with a disposable tail
and elbows like a goalie?

I do not live in you, I bear
my house inside me, everywhere

until your winters grow more kind
by the dancing firelight of mind

where knobs of brass do not exist
whose doors dissolve in tenderness

House that lets in, at last, those fears
that are its guests, to sit on chairs

feasts on their human faces, and
takes pity simply by the hand

shows her her room, and feels the hum
of wood and brick becoming home.