On Empire

I

And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden. Its victories were air, its dominions dirt. Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, The Sudan The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt like red ink on a blotter, the battles, the long sieges. dhows and feluccas, hill stations, outposts, flags fluttering down in the dusk, their golden aegis went out with the sun, the last gleam on a great crag, with tiger-eyed turbaned Sikhs, pennons of the Raj, to a sobbing bugle. I see it all come about again, the tasselled cortege, the clop of the tossing team with funeral pom-poms, the sergeant major’s shout, the stamp of boots, then the volley; there is no greater theme than this chasm-deep surrendering of power the whited eyes and robes of surrendering hordes red tunics and the great names Sind, Turkistan, Cawnpore dust-dervishes and the Saharan silence afterwards.

II

A dragonfly’s biplane settles and there, on the map, the archipelago looks as if a continent fell and scattered into fragments; from Pointe du Cap to Moule à Chique, bois-canot, laurier cannelles, canoe-wood, spicy laurel, the wind-churned trees echo the African crests; at night, the stars are far fishermen’s fires, not glittering cities, Genoa, Milan, London, Madrid, Paris but crab-hunters torches. This small place produces nothing but beauty: the wind-warped trees, the breakers on the Dennery cliffs, and the wild light that loosens a galloping mare on the plain of Vieuxfort make us merely receiving vessels of this day’s grace, light simplifies us whatever our race or gifts I’m as content as Kavanagh with his few acres; for my heart to be torn to shreds like the sea’s lace, to see how its wings catch colour when a gull lifts.