Sabbaths, WI

“Sabbaths, W.I.” is a free verse poem, meaning that there is no set meter or rhyming pattern. It illustrates the West Indies (W.I.) from the perspective of someone familiar with the land. The speaker can be read as the poet, as Walcott was born and raised on Saint Lucia, an island in the West Indies. The poem establishes A Sense of Place, on a specific day of the week. The word “Sunday” (Lines 1, 26-29), the day of the sabbath, is repeated six times in the poem. Walcott’s repetition emphasizes the importance of Sundays, and develops the theme of Religion in West Indian Culture.

In the first stanza, Sunday is connected with the “ochre streets” (Line 2) of the villages. The color ochre comes from clay and can be in the yellow, red, or brown range of hues. This highlights how the village streets are not asphalt, as in the “cities” (Line 31), but older and more natural. Ochre has been used as a pigment for hundreds of years, long before modern highways were created.

In the second stanza, the speaker develops this imagery. Ochre streets point to “the incurable sore / of poverty” (Lines 3-4) in the villages. The poem compares poverty to a raw wound. The color of ochre can be similar to the color of “yellow sulphur stone” (Line 5) that children sell. Sulphur is associated with hell—poverty that includes child labor is hellish. The speaker develops A Sense of Place with a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as—” “volcanoes like ashen roses” (Line 3). The West Indies have volcanic spires called the Pitons and the Sulphur Springs, the world’s only drive-in volcano. Volcanoes are associated with hell due to their fire and magma. The poem compares volcanoes to roses that have been turned to ash.

The speaker develops A Sense of Place in the third stanza with details about local flora and fauna. The West Indies have “banana leaves” (Line 6) and cocoa groves, which are both trees that produce edible goods. Walcott’s description utilizes the taste and smell associated with bananas and cocoa. The poem conveys how people pollute the natural features of the West Indies. The riverbed “is made of broken bottles” (7) that have been discarded by humans. Issues with trash disposal services are part of the “poverty” (Line 4) experienced by people in the West Indies. Walcott uses synesthesia, linking the senses of sound and sight. There is a “bird whose cry sounds green and / yellow” (Line 9). The birdsong is experienced as colors. The speaker repeats the color yellow in the second and third stanzas. The color green can be connected to the various trees that the speaker describes.

The following three stanzas contain one line each. The speaker describes another type of tree, “grommiers” (Line 11), as “wrestling to escape the sea” (Line 11). Here, the trees are personified, or given sentient or human qualities, through the human action of wrestling. Furthermore, humans have fought to escape the sea.

Watery imagery also comes up in the repetition of “rivers” (Line 13) in the sixth and third stanza. This establishes how the West Indies are islands that contain rivers. The speaker also includes a “dead lizard” (Line 12) in the fifth stanza. It is described as “turning blue” (Line 12); this can be connected to the colors in stanzas two and three, such as yellow. Blue and yellow are primary colors, while orange and green are created by combining primary colors. Walcott’s imagery gives a reader who has never been to the West Indies familiar colors to associate with unfamiliar things.

The following three stanzas develop A Sense of Place by connecting natural elements to humans. Geographical features, like the “dry, brief esplanade” (Line 14) and “sea almonds” (Line 14), as well as old men, are all described as dry. Two variations of the word dry—dry and drier—appear three times in Lines 14 and 15. This repetition emphasizes how the people are part of their environment, rather than above it, in the West Indies. The people reflect the world around them. Also, humans add things they create to natural elements. The old men watch a “white schooner” (Line 16), which is a kind of ship, get stuck in tree branches that naturally grow in the water. This juxtaposes the human technology of shipcraft with the wild trees. The old men play a game called draughts, which is like checkers, “with the moving frigate birds” (Line 17). Here, the speaker personifies animals by describing how the birds are playing the game with the old men.

In Stanza 10 and Stanza 11, the speaker looks at natural elements alongside objects crafted by humans. Walcott uses a simile, comparing the hillsides to “broken pots” (Line 18). This likens the human art of pottery with the hilly landscape, portraying a location that is rural but not devoid of people. There are both plants, such as “ferns” (Line 19), and “roads that begin reciting their name at vespers” (Line 20). The imagery of vespers, or evening prayers, builds the theme of Religion in West Indian Culture. Both the roads and the prayers were created by humans. The roads are personified through the human act of naming. This links humans with the things that they create to navigate the world.

The speaker personifies plants and animals in Stanza 12 and Stanza 13 to develop setting. The crabs “were willing to let an epoch pass” (Line 22). The speaker indicates that the animals have an awareness of time and the capacity for patience. Plants also have the human quality of patience. The speaker lists the “nettles that waited” (Line 25). Both plants and animals wait.

Walcott’s description of herons, which are a type of bird, includes a simile: “herons like spinsters that doubted their reflections” (Line 23). The use of “like” (Line 23) separates the birds from human actions. It contrasts with the poem’s indirect personification of the nettles and crabs. Only the birds are compared with a specific group of humans—spinsters (old, unmarried women).

In these stanzas, and the following two stanzas, the speaker repeats the word “Sundays” (Lines 26, 27, 28, 29). This highlights the importance of Sundays, the day of the sabbath, in West Indian culture.

In Stanzas 14 and 15, the speaker develops the description of the roads and echoes the imagery of streets that appear in the first stanza. The “lights at the road’s end were an occasion” (Line 27). This is another example of how the speaker develops a rural landscape. Lights are not constantly polluting the sky, as in big cities, but appear occasionally in the West Indies. The speaker uses a simile to compare “the sisters” (Line 29) to moths that gather around a “street lantern” (Line 30). The pronoun “the” in this line can be contrasted with the speaker’s use of the pronoun “my” in “my mother” (Line 28). Walcott does not have multiple sisters (only one sister), so this is not about his family. Rather, he is describing nuns, or sisters.

In Stanza 16, the final stanza, the speaker sets up a contrast between rural areas and major cities. The speaker says the “cities passed us by on the horizon” (Line 31). This echoes and completes the imagery of light in the second stanza. The horizon is what the sun, a celestial body made of fire, crosses. The fiery sun can be compared to the West Indies’ “volcanoes” (Line 3)—both are fires that humans do not control. However, the lights of the cities are made by humans. These lights are far away from the rural landscape that the speaker describes in “Sabbaths, W.I.”