Dolce far niente
November Sun Hardwoods door John Olin Gardner, z.j.
November Sun
In our treacherous
seasonless climate’s
dry heat or muggy heat or rain
I’m measuring winter by this November sun’s
diagonals shafting the window pane,
by my crouched shadow’s
embryo on the morning study floor. Once
I wallowed in ignorance
of change, of windfall, snowfall,
skull-cracking heat, sea-threshing hurricane.
Now I’d prefer to know.
We age desiring
these icy intuitions
that seasons bring.
Look, they’ll be pierced with knowledge
as with light! One boy, nine years in age
who vaults and tumbles, squirrelling
in his perpetual spring,
that ten-month, cautious totterer
my daughter.
I rarely let them in.
This is a sort of
death cell
where knowledge of our fatality is hidden.
I trace here, like a bent astronomer
the circle of the year,
nurturing its inner seasons’
mulch, drench, fire, ash.
In my son’s
restless gaze
I am time-ridden,
the sedentary dial of his days.
Our shadows point one way,
even their brief shadows on the cropped morning grass.
I am pierced with this. I cannot look away.
Ah Christ, how cruelly the needles race!
Derek Walcott (23 januari 1930 – 17 maart 2017))
St. Lucia, de geboorteplaats van Derek Walcott
Zie voor de schrijvers van de 4e november ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.
