THE ALMOND TREES
Derek Walcott
“cold churning ocean, the Atlantic,
no visible history”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Mongrel - a mixed breed dog
Pitches - throws casually
Pompeian - relating to Pompeii, a city in Southern Italy which was destroyed by a
volcano (people were burned alive, and their ashen remains are still there today)
Daphnes - a plant with pretty pink flowers
Laurels - bushes with dark green leaves, like a bay tree, important in Roman culture,
where people wore crowns / wreaths made of laurel to signify great successes in
music, sports, battle and other fields.
Acetylene - a gas that is colourless, but with a strong odor - it burns very brightly
Foundered - filled with water and sunk (as in ships)
Barge - a long, flat boat that carries cargo and goods
Underheel - underneath the feet, or the heels of the feet
Brazen - strong, courageous, perhaps a little competitive and rash
Welded - when metal objects are melted and fused together by fire
Huddled - crouched or pressed together, usually for comfort
Broad dialect - a strong or thick accent that is from a particular place
Hamadryad - from Greek myth, a wood nymph that lives inside a tree
Boles- tree trunks
Ravaged - destroyed
Metamorphosis - a process of change, transformation or transition
, STORY/SUMMARY
Stanzas 1-3: The speaker states that there is ‘nothing’ in the landscape as he looks
around, it is ‘early’ in the day. He observes the cold sand and the cold Atlantic ocean,
being more specific now he says that he cannot see any ‘history’ here. The only thing
that he can see is a row of sea almond trees, that look as though they are made from
coppery metal, all twisted, and he notices an old fisherman playing fetch with his
‘mongrel’ dog on the beach. The speaker says there is ‘no visible history’ until the sun
rises in the sky and notices them, causing them to cast shadows on the beach.
Stanzas 4-6: By midday, the atmosphere has completely changed: the coast is covered
with girls sunbathing, in scarves, sunglasses and bikinis that remind the speaker of
Pompeii. They look like nymphs, like brown daphne flowers and laurel bushes, they
will all have - like the original nymphs had - their own sacred grove, a holy space
where they live. In this case, the sacred grove is provided by the ‘twisted, coppery’
almond trees. The sharp, bright sunlight and the salt air has burned their trunks to the
same colour as the rust that you find on sinking barges, it is so harsh that it cooks pale
skin to a coppery colour.
Stanzas 7-10: The sand is white-hot like ash underfoot, but the tanned colour of the
aged limbs of the sunbathers is from fire, the fire of the sun. They shine fiercely, and
are ‘cured’ or purified because they survived the heat. The speaker remarks that the
colour of tanned trees and tanned bodies is the same. The almond trees have been
‘welded’ - melted into that shape by the heat, they are ‘naked’ because the sun, wind
and sea salt have bleached them and stripped their bark - they have also been
metaphorically ‘stripped of their name’, the Greek and Roman names they were once
given. Their branches have died back, and the sound of their leaves creates a ‘broad
dialect’, a strong, coarse accent that they shared together.
Stanzas 11-13: It’s not like the sound of the almond trees were the cries of a running
nymph, who turned herself into a tree to escape danger, breaking into leaves and
growing a trunk. The sound of the almond trees’ grief howls towards the sea as the
wind rushes through their damaged and burned holes. One of the sunburned women
on the beach rises, and turns to spread her wrap on the beach, as the almond trees
surround her as though they were a sacred grove, that grieves and cares for her with a
kind of parental love.
