A Poet Reflects

There’s a fresh light that follows a storm
while the whole sea still havoc, in its bright wake
I saw the veiled face of Maria Concepcion
marrying the ocean, then drifting away
in the widening lace of her bridal train
with white gulls her bridesmaids, till she was gone.
I wanted nothing after that day.

—Derek Walcott, from Section 11 “After the Storm” in “The Schooner Flight“ in Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986)