From 25 Poems to Nobel

In 1948, at the age of eighteen, after exhausting all other sources of raising EC$200.00 to publish his debut collection of poetry, titled 25 Poems, Derek was left with no other option but to ask his mother, a widow having to raise three children on her own, to loan him the money. It is said that she shed tears when confronted with the fact that no one, not the government nor one business house, was willing to sponsor the printing of her son’s book, thus leaving her with no choice but to come up with the money herself. Derek Walcott acknowledges what a great feat that was. “I asked her for a lot of money then. Two hundred dollars then must have been two thousand, three thousand now, maybe, and she found it and gave it to me, and I printed my first book.”

Derek was able to make back the money and repay the loan by peddling 25 Poems from house to house and at street corners.

Modeste Downes’ “25 Poems to Nobel” speaks of Walcott’s poetic journey and manifestation.

Ask those who were there
When a fledgling, newly winged
Tossed about in its nest

Early the tools of trade were marked
With pen and brush this prodigy
was set to catapult
an emerging lot into fame.

A dexterous team
Of Irish luminaries
‘masters’ in robes
Led by missionary zeal to these island shores
trained their guns at minds
offloading recitations and themes
hitherto unheard
setting fertile imagination on fire.

Naturally, a hybrid emerged
and quickly blossomed
fruiting 25 Poems
that glowed like a conflagration.

Marching on a common trail
Comrades in arms stood their presence
Making brush and pen
A constant companion
Making two both genius and immortal.

The vowed, like a sentence of execution
to capture and frame
every nook, every branch and twig
every aspiring mountain peak
with their tools of trade—to quote:
to ‘put down, in paint, in words,
as palmists…every neglected, self-pitying inlet…’

Like navigators
drunk with the spirit of conquest
they shouldered a pledge

Like the Macedonian legend
with thirst unquenchable
after half lives of salted hopes
reduced by deaths
expectations deflated
when the vision flickered
One bade farewell to mates
to lulling shores
to the frequented shallows
that he prized like a schoolgirl’s kiss
that he had sworn to serve like a spouse
seeking new scenes to script and paint.

Wings now set for the soaring
The branching landed this gifted scissor bird
There where the hummingbird is patented.
There he found a home
there he built a nest
there an art was nurtured
and a bird did truly take flight.

Gliding through open space
seeds of poetry, of prose, of drama
that dropped from his weighted beak
swelled and burgeoned.
Even a sparrow crooned flat
to the eloquence of his metaphors.

The prodigy roared to medalling applause
Yet, away from home
he pined for another perch
unable to divorce the truest of brides

Atlas, he too succumbed to the predictable
the feared metamorphosis
and fled the barrenness of the archipelago

Mastering every idiom
he shook the literary world
into refined consciousness
as volumes later
scripts and stages later
the courtyards of literati applauded;
until he too was ‘a man no more
but the fervour and intelligence
of a whole country.’

Published and laurelled
old allegiances forever tugging at the heartstrings
he flutters back triumphantly
to anchor his graying strands
between the firmness of breasts
that have won their own laurels
the prodigal’s guilt trailing like perfume
feet planted, he inhales deep and long
the salubrious fumes of La Soufriere
blessing the gift of owning them both
of knowing that they’ll always be there
to energise his art—all art faithfully
as when first he was struck by middle age
and caught contemplating
‘vision thickening to a frosted pane’
and the ultimate was dreams away

Now, at last
he can trek to Anse-la-Raye
unaccompanied by baggage
Sun-scorched fishermen
palms rock-hard by their trade
await under the shades of the ageing sea almonds
anticipating his many defeats
on the small wooden table.
There, between intervals of slamming and ‘firing’
this mountain of a native son
can recite from the gut
‘Today I am your poet, yours.’

About Modeste Downes

Ranked in the top ten of St. Lucia’s all-time best poets, Modeste Downes, has published three critically acclaimed collections of poetry—Phases (2005), Theatre of the Mind (2012), and A Lesson on Wings (2019). He was the winner of the 2004 George Odlum Award for Creative Artists; Phases, was the winner of the 2005 M&C Main Prize for literature; and Theatre of the Mind was the winner of the 2012 CDF Arts Award for poetry. Modeste Downes is also a distinguished Jako Journalist. His latest book, Jungle Democracy on Trial: The Politics of Covid, presents a commentary on the current state of politics in St. Lucia. The poet was born and raised in the Vieux Fort area and is among a small cohort of writers who are giving rise to a distinguished body of Vieux Fort literature that is among the best of what the island has to offer.