Where’s the future’s clawlets?
Where’s the future’s clawlets?
Scratches on the street
pointing the way, like spires, arrows.
And the decoys
which captured us in parentheses?
The demon of wild entertainments
had such success with just a log in the fire,
making one want to keep changing places.
Suddenly, a pause, endspiel spire-ends, post-space,
suspended there like a low ceiling.
If the computers fall into a trance,
the claw will scribble things, like inverted commas.
The world is pressed between them, traffic-wise,
in context, in the fixed habit
of running backwards.
Scratches on the street
pointing the way, like spires, arrows.
And the decoys
which captured us in parentheses?
The demon of wild entertainments
had such success with just a log in the fire,
making one want to keep changing places.
Suddenly, a pause, endspiel spire-ends, post-space,
suspended there like a low ceiling.
If the computers fall into a trance,
the claw will scribble things, like inverted commas.
The world is pressed between them, traffic-wise,
in context, in the fixed habit
of running backwards.
Translated by Derek Walcott
Page(s) 198
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