XXXVII |
I. Walcott visits
Lisbon and compares its coast to Port of Spain's. On a Sunday, he
reflects on the beginning of the slave trade here. |
| Il. Walcott
recalls how Pope Alexander divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, and he thinks
on his own European ancestry and heritage. |
| Ill. Looking at
the bronze horsemen at the wharf, he notices how the imperial past has been forgotten
here. |
| XXXVIII |
I. Next, Walcott
visits London where he sees Omeros as a derelict clutching his epic in
hand. Omeros is turned out by the church-warden. |
| II. Walcott looks
on the London statuary along the Thames, a center of the empire which ignored the shadows
of its colonized margins. |
| III. The tours of
London are mythmakers and symbols of power. (Epic catalogue) |
| XXXIX |
I. Now Walcott
visits Dublin. He weighs the good and bad of being Irish--having a
history, language, and faith from which to draw vs. the continued division and violence. |
| II. A passage in
tribute to Joyce on Ireland. |
| III. Along the
Liffey, Walcott encounters the ghost of James Joyce, who he treats as another
manifestation of Omeros. |
| XL |
I. In Greece,
along the Aegean coast, Walcott sees Odysseus and his crew. |
| Il. Untrusting of
Odysseus, the crew is a "black crew," who have wandered from Africa. |
| Ill. Walcott
travels to Istanbul and Venice, which are other examples
of the alienating weight of cities and the European heritage of art and literature. |
| XLI |
I. Perhaps in Rome,
Walcott reflects on the Roman use of Greek slaves, as well as the Greek and U.S. practice
of slaves. |
| Il. Walcott
returns to North America and Concord. He ponders still again his
dual heritage, the imperial actions of the U.S. toward slaves and Indians, and sees that
colonial heritage even in the landscape. |
| Ill. Walcott goes
to Boston Harbor and ponders the Pilgrims and the Transcendentalists of
the New England past with its chains of a subtler type. |
| XLII |
I. In Toronto,
Walcott talks to Nina, a Polish immigrant waitress and thinks of her memories of Polish
oppression. He recalls great Polish poets who have had to accept exile. |
| II. It is
November, and Walcott imagines Weldon running before a wintry past of oppression. |
| III. The ghost dance is about to
begin. |
| XLIII |
I. Weldon looks
on the massacre at the ghost dance. |
| Il. She recalls
the enslavement of Indians. As a kind of mouthpiece for Walcott, she sees a shaman
as Omeros, and she is Helen among the dead. |
| Ill. Weldon
ponders that history cannot be changed. Walcott tells her that the winter of
civilizations obliterates the past. He looks for Nina but can't remember her
address. |