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