Predatory Eden Story

In his prime, Walcott defended

The sea as great as history

In vocabulary you’d weep

With envy to read, the coral

Cement of sea floors shark-shadowed—

Using English contra English

In the dark ears of ferns and in

The salt chuckle of rock sea pools,

To cry, we from from minor islands

Colonized have our own stories,

Although the history mentioned

Involves the Bible, reminder

England, once, was a small island

Without history, colonized,

And those kinds of lamentations

Rose as freely from the desert tribes

Whose displacement by empires fed

Their ripped raw history of God

As local hero dreamed ruler,

One day, over colonizers—

Look back at the text. Walcott’s waves

Of jubilation vanishing

As the sea’s lace dries in the sun

Have been infested, invaded

By the narratives, the language

That floated in with the English

That had invaded the English

Several centuries earlier,

That had infested the Romans

After evolving in the Jews

Who picked up the mycelia

Threading back to Sumeria—

People fade, sink into the sands

Where successive waves of life leave

Tale floaters from far-away lands.

Their serpents are fruit in your trees.