A Careful Passion

Walcott’s poem, “A Careful Passion,” offers insight into the speaker’s frame of mind beginning with the title. The seemingly oxymoronic phrase underscores the speaker’s feelings of detachment and disillusionment that crop up later in the poem and prepare the reader to expect a poem not about a frenzied relationship between lovers, but something more mediated and ambivalent. Walcott places an epigraph immediately following the title, lines from a Jamaican song: “Hosanna, I build me house, Lawd, / De rain come wash it ‘way.” The song alludes to the Biblical story of the man who, after hearing the words of Jesus, chooses to ignore them and build his house on sand, as opposed to the man who built a house on rock. The house on sand collapses when the storms come. By placing the song lyrics at the beginning of the poem, Walcott further alludes to the problematic nature of the relationship he is about to reveal in the poem.

The poem begins with a simple and clear Caribbean setting, and Walcott spends multiple lines describing the scenery: “The Cruise Inn, at the city’s edge / Extends a breezy prospect of the sea / From tables fixed like islands near a hedge / Of foam-white flowers” (Lines 1-4). The tables, images that will recur over the coming stanzas, suggest stasis, and the images of the sea, the city’s edge, and the hedge all suggest a sensation of being on the edge, or just outside of something. The speaker feels detached from the setting, a sensation furthered by his description of the Marimba band that “deaden[s] thought” (Line 4) for him; his lover appears to feel differently, though, as she drums her hand in line to the band’s beat. The speaker notices her but prefers to watch “an old Greek freighter quitting port” (Line 7), another image of lethargy and stasis, that suggests death, finality, or the end of something.

The second stanza further alludes to the speaker’s detachment and loneliness. He says, “You hardly smell the salt breeze in this country / Except you come down to the harbor’s edge” (Lines 8-9). The speaker does not experience basic sensations, like smell, until he comes to the edge of the city; he sought out this experience but still feels detached from his home and lover. He describes small islands to the south, where “the green wave spreads on the printless beach” (Line 11), emphasizing his sense of loneliness. He punctuates this image with something startlingly sexual: “I think of wet hair and a grape-red mouth” (Line 12), introducing an intensity of longing and desire within the context of the speaker’s static, more detached imagery. The hair and mouth are not a full picture of the lover, who the reader never sees completely fleshed out, suggesting that the speaker has not fully known or understood her.

The speaker leaves his reverie, moves back to the present scene. and offers the reader an additional detail about his lover, as he describes “The hand which wears her husband’s ring, lies / On the table idly, a brown leaf on the sand. / The other brushes off two coupling flies” (Lines 13-15). The image of the ring recasts the situation, adding a layer of tension for both parties, and likely changing the reader’s understanding of each. Notably, the speaker views the ring as belonging to the lover’s husband, suggesting an ownership that shuts off his own access to her. As he contemplates this, the flies that alight on her take on metaphorical meaning; a coupling pair, she dismisses them and brushes them off, foreshadowing the breakup she is about to initiate with the speaker.

Walcott places the following line in dialogue: “Sometimes I wonder if you’ve lost your speech” (Line 16). While not expressly clear who is speaking, the reader can assume it is likely the woman, calling attention to the speaker’s lack of communication and his opaqueness. Rather than responding, he observes the seagulls overhead, “revolving in the wind” (Line 18), echoing his own revolving thoughts, as he notes, “Wave after wave of memory silts the mind” (Line 19). The speaker’s mind is dense and muddled, filled with memory and whatever emotion it carries, but unable to communicate this to his lover.

The speaker returns to the scenic imagery, casting it in a positive glow: “The gulls seem happy in their element. / We are lapped gently in the sentiment / Of a small table by the harbor’s edge” (Lines 20-22). Rather than focusing on his lover and her words, the speaker takes in his scenery, feeling at ease, and repeats images he has already introduced in the poem. He says, “Hearts learn to die well that have died before” (Line 23), suggesting a history with heartbreak and an ability to endure subsequent pain. He expands the death imagery, describing “My sun-puffed carcass, its eyes full of sand, / Rolls spun by breakers on a southern shore” (Lines 24-25). The image indicates blindness and resignation, rather than passion and pain. The lover speaks again: “This way is best, before we both get hurt” (Line 26), and the speaker responds by describing himself in an out-of-body way, asking the reader to “Look how I turn there, featureless, inert” (Line 27). He is detached and unmoved by her “weary phrase” (Line 28) but responds in an almost robotic way, enacting the behavior he thinks she expects of him as he reaches out to touch her hand.

The speaker claims that it is “Better to lie, to swear some decent pledge, / To resurrect the buried heart again; / To twirl a glass and smile, as in pain, / At a small table by the water’s edge” (Lines 30-33). He cycles back to his static image of the table and admits that agreeing with the lover, although it is a lie, is the only way forward. A voice interjects again, although this time it is unclear if it is the speaker or the lover: “Yes, this is best, things might have grown much worse” (Line 34), but the speaker follows up and agrees, reiterating, “And that is all the truth, it could be worse” (Line 35). Rather than feeling the breakup deeply, the speaker frames it to prevent emotional damage, remaining aloof as he declares it could have been worse.

He delves into a mediation on his feelings of alienation in the following lines, stating, “All is exhilaration on the eve, / Especially, when the self-seeking heart / So desperate for some mirror to believe / Finds in strange eyes the old original curse” (Lines 36-39). In the wake of the breakup, the speaker feels distant and dispassionate, recognizing that his own heart has not found a mirrored self in the lover, and this realization feels familiar to him, like a repeatable occurrence that is bound to happen with each romantic partner he has. He resigns himself to this realization and reestablishes his aloofness, saying, “So cha cha cha, begin the long goodbyes, / Leave the half-tasted sorrows of each pledge, / As the salt wind brings brightness to her eyes, / At a small table by the water’s edge” (Lines 40-43). The speaker adopts a flippant tone, and the return to the table image underscores the idea that nothing has changed for him, on an emotional level; he came to the interaction with a resolution to maintain a certain degree of separation, and he has done so. The speaker claims that the brightness, or tears, in his lover’s eyes are brought on by the salt wind; he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the emotional pain she might be feeling.

In the final stanza, the speaker accompanies his lover out to the street as dusk falls. They are alone together, as the “[s]tores rattl[e] shut” (Line 45). The speaker once more notices the seagulls, and he ends the poem on this image: “Only the gulls, hunting the water’s edge / Wheel like our lives, seeking something worth pity” (Lines 46-47). He circles back to the image of the water’s edge and chooses the verb “hunt” to give a voraciousness to the gulls’ searching, implying that he shares their desire. The poem is open-ended, alluding to the speaker’s dissatisfaction, lack of conclusion, and his search for a deeper sense of meaning, something that he could not get from his failed relationship.