OK, OK, going for raw beauty and power eh? And of course Joelle, those first two lines you picked arguably, just by themselves, the most powerful love poem ever writtten... Here is a favourite of mine which I can never complete reading aloud before I blub. I was born and raised in Barbados in the West Indies and this is by a well known Barbadian man of letters. I wager anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on a tropical island will be moved by it...
HYMN TO THE SEA Like all who live on small islands I must always be remembering the sea, Being always cognizant of her presence; viewing Her through apertures in the foliage; hearing, When the wind is from the south, her music, and The warm rankness of her; tasting And feeling her kisses on bright sunbathed days: I must always be remembering the sea. Always, always the encircling sea, Eternal: lazylapping, crisscrossed with stillness, Or windruffed, aglitter with gold; and the surf Waist-high for children, or horses for titans; Her lullaby, her singing, her moaning; on sand, On shingle, on breakwater, and on rock; By sunlight, starlight, moonlight, darkness: I must always be remembering the sea. Go down to the sea upon this random day By metalled road, by sandway, by rockpath, And come to her. Upon the polished jetsam, Shell and stone and weed and saltfruit Torn from the underwater continents, cast Your garments and despondencies, re-enter Her embracing womb: a return, a completion. I must always be remembering the sea. Life came from the sea, and once a goddess arose Fullgrown from the saltdeep, love Flows from the sea, a flood; and the food Of islanders is reaped from the sea's harvest. And not only life and sustenance; visions, too, Are born of the sea: the patterning of her rhythm Finds echoes within the musing mind. I must always be remembering the sea. Symbol of fruitfulness, symbol of barrenness, Mother and destroyer, the calm and the storm! Life and desire and dreams and death Are born of the sea; this swarming land Her creation, her signature set upon the salt ooze To blossom into life; and the red hibiscus And the red roofs burn more brightly against her. I must always be remembering the sea. Frank Collymore * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
