Dark August by Derek Walcott

Hello Everyone, so August is here, with everything it brings. We are closer to the end of 2011, than we were to the beginning. We found this poem, "Dark August" by Derek Walcott online, interesting read. Have a good August, with its rush and breaks.

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.