Walcott’s Robinson Crusoe

 Walcott’s Robinson Crusoe

*Patrick Kavanagh – Irish poet from Monahan, Ireland (not far from my father’s hometown in Longford, Ireland).

^Derek Walcott – Nobel Prize winning poet from the Caribbean island nation of St Lucia.

 

While I admire the work of Kavanagh*

I relate more to that of Walcott^

 

I have too many origin stories

To make sense of

 

I must self invent

From a soil

Foreign to my ancestors

 

A soil I love nevertheless

I don’t wish to change her;

 

She already has changed too much

Though of course I am part of that too

 

& yet I stand

As good as any man

 

With my own secret knowledge

 

 

©Malachi Doyle 2022.