Derek Walcott - Sixty Years After lyrics

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort, I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair, her beauty hunched like a crumpled flower, the one whom I thought as the fire of my young life would do her duty to be golden and beautiful and young forever even as I aged. She was treble-chinned, old, her devastating smile was netted in wrinkles, but I felt the fever briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating time and the lie of general pleasantries. Small waves still break against the small stone pier where a boatman left me in the orange peace of dusk, a half-century ago, maybe happier being erect, she like a deer in her shyness, I stalking an impossible consummation; those who knew us knew we would never be together, at least, not walking. Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.