“Then silence is sawn in half by a dragonfly
as eels sign their names along the bottom-sand
when the sunrise brightens the river's memory and waves of huge ferns are nodding to the sea's sound.
Although the smoke forgets the earth from which is ascends
and the nettles guard the holes where the laurels were killed an iguana hears the axes, clouding each lens
over its lost name, when the hunched island was called
'Iounalao' 'Where it iguana is from' But, taking its own time, the iguana will scale
the rigging of vines in a year, its dewlap fanned,
its elbows akimbo, its deliberate tail moving with the island. The slit pods of its eyes
ripened in a pause that lasted for centuries,
that rose with the Aruacs' smoke till a new race unknown to the lizard stood measuring the trees.
These were their pillars that fell, leaving a blue space
for a single God where the old gods stood before, The first god was a gommier. The generator
began with a whine, and a shark, with sidewise jaw,
sent the chips flying like mackrel over water into trembling weeds”

— Derek Walcott , book Omeros

"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Omeros

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Derek Walcott 17

Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright 1930–2017

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“I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizard, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the color seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendor. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.”

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“This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.”

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Context: Attention involves seeing and hearing. We hear not only with our ears but also we are sensitive to the tones, the voice, to the implication of words, to hear without interference, to capture instantly the depth of a sound. Sound plays an extraordinary part in our lives: the sound of thunder, a flute playing in the distance, the unheard sound of the universe; the sound of silence, the sound of one’s own heart beating; the sound of a bird and the noise of a man walking on the pavement; the waterfall. The universe is filled with sound. This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.

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page 438
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John of the Mountains, 1938

“p>Fierce and gentle,
Loud and silent,
The river doesn't understand itself.
The wave doesn't find itself, until it reaches the sea.Oh the wave passes,
And the waves to come will be the same.
Hunger for love
Is strong in the heart.Standing before the waves,
I think of you and me.
I think of the great sea
And I wonder where the waves come from.The waves must come from the wind.
And I wonder where the wind comes from,
And I wonder
When will we love each other again?The waves deep in the sea
And the waves on the sea's surface
Long for the shore of the sea.
Day and night the waves cannot sleep
As I can not sleep, even in dreams,
Because of my longing for you.When I go to the North,
Or to the South,
When I go anywhere, I think of you,
My only direction.Out in the great sea
Thousands of waves are pushing,
Which one never reachs the shore
Even miles and miles from home?Life is so long;
Years and months go by.
Like the sea, life is endless.
Clouds fly to the distant horizon.How can I become
Like the hundreds of thousands of small waves
In the great sea of love
And lap forever against your shore?”

Xuân Quỳnh (1942–1988) poet

"Sóng" (29-12-1967)

“What is now called Macedonia was in earlier times called Emathia. And it took its present name from Macedon, one of its early chieftains. And there was also a city emathia close to the sea. Now a part of this country was taken and held by certain of the Epeirotes and the Illyrians, but most of it by the Bottiaei and the Thracians. The Bottiaei came from Crete originally, so it is said, along with Botton as chieftain. As for the Thracians, the Pieres inhabited Pieria and the region about Olympus; the Paeones, the region on both sides of the Axius River, which on that account is called Amphaxitis; the Edoni and Bisaltae, the rest of the country as far as the Strymon. Of these two peoples the latter are called Bisaltae alone, whereas a part of the Edoni are called Mygdones, a part Edones, and a part Sithones. But of all these tribes the Argeadae, as they are called, established themselves as masters, and also the Chalcidians of Euboea; for the Chalcidians of Euboea also came over to the country of the Sithones and jointly peopled about thirty cities in it, although later on the majority of them were ejected and came together into one city, Olynthus; and they were named the Thracian Chalcidians.”

Strabo Geographica

Book 7, Fragm 11
Geographica, 7 BC

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Derek Walcott 17

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