Derek Walcott - To a Painter in England (for Harold Simmons) lyrics

Where you rot under the strict, grey industry Of cities of fog and winter fevers, I Send this to remind you of personal islands For which Gauguins sicken, and to explain How I have grown to learn your pa**ionate Talent with its wild love of landscape It is April and already no doubt for you, As the journals report, the prologues of spring Appear behind the rails of city parks, Or the late springtime must be publishing Pink apologies along the wet, black branch To men in overcoats, who will conceal The lines of songs leaping behind their pipes. And you may find it difficult to imagine This April as a season where the tide burns Black, leaves crack into ashes from the drought, A dull red burning, like heart's desolation. The roads are white with dust and the leaves Of the trees have a nervous, spinsterish quiet. And walking under the trees today I saw The canoes that are marked with comic names; Daylight, St Mary Magdalen, Gay Girl. They made me think of your chief scenes for painting Of days of instruction at the soft villa, When we watched your serious experience, learning. So you will understand how I feel lost To see our gift wasting before the season, you who defined with an imperious palette The several postures of this virginal island, You understand how I am lost to have Your brush's zeal and not to be explicit. But the grace we avoid, that gives us vision, Discloses around corners an architecture whose Sabbath logic we can take or refuse; And leaves to the single soul its own decision After landscapes, palms, cathedrals or the hermit-thrush, That would inform the blind world of its flesh.