#dark august

of this black August

——

Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless

at fixing the rain? But I am learning slowly/

to love the dark days

-Derek Walcott, Dark August

Dark August

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky of this black August. My sister, the sun, broods in her yellow room and won’t come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume like a kettle, rivers overrun; still, she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things, my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out. Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills, the air with gossiping mosquitoes, and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister, parting the beads of the rain, with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all with not be as it was, but it will be true (you see they will not let me love as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones, The black rain, the white hills, when once I loved only my happiness and you.

Derek Walcott