Derek Walcott - Ruins of A Great House - A Close Reading by Tajae Pryce

This poem, as its title suggests, most likely was sparked by the observance of a specific house that Wilcott knew of but what is represents is much more comprehensive of the colonial period and its effects. the poem opens up with images of a disjecta membra, which describes scattered parts or  disjointed quotations. To me these fragmentations speak for the disintegration and dissolution of native peoples regarded not only where and how they lived but also their culture itself. Walcott tells of an open mouth lizard with “dragonish claws” taking over the now unrecognizable area. He goes on to describe familiar elements of a Caribbean island, eucalyptus boughs, the smell of dead limes, but they are now juxtaposed with an eerie silence and solitude that was foreign to the scents and sights. His criticism of colonial conquest and destruction is even more present later on in the reading as he writes about “ancestral murderers and poets, more perplexed in memory by every ulcerous crime.” and the world’s “green age”. My understanding of these inclusions is the description of injustices going on by imperialists eventually becoming the norm for both sides; perpetrators and victims.