Night fishing - a poem by Derek Walcott

Night Fishing

Line trawl for each word
with the home-sick toss
of a black pirogue anchored
in stuttering phosphorus.

The crab-fishers' torches
keep to the surf's crooked line,
and a cloud's page scorches
with a smell of kerosene.

Thorny stars halo
the sybil's black cry:
"Apotheneis thelo
I am longing to die."

But, line, live in the sounds
that ignorant shallows use;
then throw the silvery nouns
to open-mouthed canoes.

- From The Arkansas Testament, Faber & Faber, 1987