Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells <br />into a village; she assumes the impenetrable <br /> <br />musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat, <br />her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells, <br /> <br />coals of gold oranges, braziers of melon. <br />Commerce and tambourines increase her heat. <br /> <br />Hellfire or the whorehouse: crossing Park Street, <br />a surf of sailor's faces crest, is gone <br /> <br />with the sea's phosphoresence; the boites-de-nuit <br />tinkle like fireflies in her thick hair. <br /> <br />Blinded by headlamps, deaf to taxi klaxons, <br />she lifts her face from the cheap, pitch oil flare <br /> <br />toward white stars, like cities, flashing neon, <br />burning to be the bitch she must become. <br /> <br />As daylight breaks the coolie turns his tumbril <br />of hacked, beheaded coconuts towards home.<br /><br />Derek Walcott<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-in-the-gardens-of-port-of-spain/
