Safe Conduct

Derek Walcott

Rilke was whirled into heaven.
After that, Pasternak.
One smokes with the seraphim,
the other has come back

to plod past fronze ponds
with their harp-wide willows,
his grey forelock a stallion’s,
his heart like Akhmatova’s,

like a grey horse in winter
that, through thick whirling snow,
as this white page goes whiter,
whinnies, and is here.

Copyright © Derek Walcott