Derek Walcott - Tiepolo's Hound

In true Walcott fashion, the sharp intelligence manifests in a casual, yet titillating manner, exhibiting form and content particularly with alternate rhyming couplets. Enjoy this extract!

Derek Walcott
1992 Nobel Prize in Literature
Tiepolo's Hound (2000)

But isn’t that the exact perspective of loss,
that the loved one’s features blur, in dimming detail,

the smile with its dimpled corners, her teasing voice
rasping with affection, as Time draws its veil,

until all you remember are her young knees
gleaming from an olive dress, her way of walking,

as if on a page of self-arranging trees,
hair a gold knot, rose petals silently talking?

I catch an emerald sleeve, light knits her hair,
in a garland of sculpted braids, her burnt cheeks;

catch her sweet breath, be the blest on near her
at that Lucullan table, lean when she speaks,

as clouds of centuries pass over the brilliant ground
of the fresco’s meats and linen, while her wrist

in my forced memory caresses and arched hound,
as all its figures melt in the fresco’s mist.