Walk… don’t walk… a digital play
Mystical forces, magical energies at cross roads
Palpable sensations in a sacred space
Caught in a Mediterranean trance
Restraint beneath the stillness of weathered bark
The rare glance of an old angel –
The Saint that slipped past God
Into the silver bliss into the unknown where we cannot go
Which we cannot mention
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Image Taken from Reapting Islands
At the beginning of the year I felt compelled to pencil in my diary the birthday of one of our Caribbean icons. Why, perhaps because of some psychological, sociological or symbolic significance?
Today I give thanks for the expression of his individuality. I embrace his passion, his narrative poetry, and his imagistic style. He writes with such intensity and clarity that even after years of writing them his poems still seems eternally fresh.
With my urgent need to express how I feel on his eighty second birthday (82nd) words fail me. So to use the words of Wordsworth, another iconic poet who died (in 1850) many years before Walcott was born; Walcott’s poetry is a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Derek Walcott’s works have all the hallmarks of great poetry having achieved such literary success; Nobel Prize for literature in 1992, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2011. He is an excellent example of what one can achieve as a poet. I am forever enriched by his knowledge. As a Caribbean poet Walcott’s spirit is intertwined in my literary experience as there will always be an allegiance to and gratitude for him.
Happy Birthday Honorable Derek Walcott.
(In St Lucia Derek Walcott’s country of birth his birthday January 23 is a national event.)
Excerpt taken from White Egrets by Derek Walcott appended:
Be happy now at Cap, for the simplest joy-
For a line of white egrets prompting the last word,
For the sea’s recitation re-entering my head
With questions it erases, canceling the demonic voice
By which I have recently been possessed; unheard,
It whispers the way the fiend does to a madman
Who gibbers to his bloody hands that he was seized
The way the sea swivels in the conch’s ear, like the roar
Of applause that precedes the actor with increased
Doubt to the pitch of paralyzed horror
That his prime is past. If it is true
That my gift has withered, that there’s little left of it,
If this man is right then there’s nothing else to do
But abandon poetry like a woman because you love it
And would not see her hurt, least of all by me;
So walk to the cliff’s edge and soar above it,
The jealousy, the spite, the nastiness, with the grace
Of a frigate over Barrel of Beef, its rock;
Be grateful that you wrote well in this place,
Let the torn poems sail from you like a flock
Of white egrets in a long last sigh of release.
Photgraphed by Judy Olsen
Quiet moments punctuate thoughts
Molding, melting ice pellets
The unsuspected interlocks
Liberty folds in trickles
Purity, color mounts
Sunlight pulls in vortex encounters
The organic fascinates,
…talks with certainty
Luminous with joy
The blue pine of autumn
On Table Top glass
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
I
We sat
Exploring life
Our lives – eyes – wide open
Under fettered compelling emotions
Ethnographic still life
Inscriptions in mosaics piece by piece
II
Nocturnal pauses – the rhythm of bugle
cowbell, goombay and goat skin drums
Images muse in cultural imagination
Subliminal manipulations
Vividly conjured
III
Mosaic depictions in an episodic buzz of a Byzantine era
Vignettes bold
Night and day reflections
World of spirits – old and new
Rattles, dazzles
Yoruba tradition blares in a drumming dance
Multiple layers under the dominance of gazes
Red, yellow, blue, gold, white and black touchingly reconciled
The radiance of Junkanoo faces not bound by season
But kindred spirits
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Image taken by Saas Fee, perle-der-alpen.ch
Love After Love
-
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here.
Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.
Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.
Feast on your life
.
Poem Written by Derek Walcott
Some may say this is cynical piece for Valentines Day; I call it a masterpiece. Be positive appreciate the person you are simultaneously celebrate others in your life.
Honey suckle drips
On billowing yellow-iris-print
Yellow Begonia’s blossom
In the gold dust of midday’s splendor
-
Poem written by Brenda L. McCartney
Photographed by John Smith
Monosyllabic gaze
A gentle insistence
Honey-colored mornings
Hypnotic patterns – calm blue
Crimson thoughts, chilling notes
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
?
Photograhed by Momiji
Sunlight streams
Leaf peeping
Orange tints
Bare boughs, bald moments
The sap of life
Remembered beginnings
Opened secrets
A mystery wrapped in an enigma
Winter’s solace
Kind peace in solstice’s afterglow
Liberty in eternal beauty
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Photographed by Alissa Stella Maris
Pounding almonds on pathways
Elemental desires
Rough tides lapping
Bicycle rides
Line fishing
Swimming smiles
Echoes off concave ledges
Birds flies disperse
Sequined colors on flawless teal
Can not tell –
the beach to be quiet
even seagulls to stop talking
Sea grapes groves and almond trees -
team around rocks
Energy thunder through
Sun kissed pleasures broken shells
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Image Taken from MACO Caribbean Living
Feather touch eyes pare
A preserving indulgence
The searing ache
Methylated Spirits
An iridescent stillness
Wildly beautiful
-
Poem by Brenda L. McCartney
© 2011 McCartney House
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