Derek Walcott - XIV (period 5) lyrics

With the frenzy of an old snake shedding its skin, the speckled road, scored with ruts, smelling of mold, twisted on itself and reentered the forest where the dasheen leaves thicken and folk stories begin. Sunset would threaten us as we climbed closer to her house up the asphalt hill road, whose yam vines wrangled over gutters with the dark reek of moss, the shutters closing like the eyelids of that mimosa called Ti-Marie; then — lucent as paper lanterns, lamplight glowed through the ribs, house after house — there was her own lamp at the black twist of the path. There's childhood, and there's childhood's aftermath. She began to remember at the minute of the fireflies, to the sound of pipe water banging in kerosene tins, stories she told to my brother and myself. Her leaves were the libraries of the Caribbean. The luck that was ours, those fragrant origins! Her head was magnificent, Sidone. In the gully of her voice shadows stood up and walked, her voice travels my shelves. She was the lamplight in the stare of two mesmerized boys still joined in one shadow, indivisible twins.