"Midsummer" by Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott is a poet and playwright from the island of Saint Lucia. He was born 23 January 1930 and is currently a professor of poetry at the University of Essex. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 and has collected a large assortment of other awards in his career.

Certain things here are quietly American-
that chain-link fence dividing the absent roars
of the beach from the empty ball park, its holes
muttering the word umpire instead of empire;
the gray, metal light where an early pelican
coasts, with its engines off, over the pink fire
of a sea whose surface is as cold as Maine's.
The light warms up the sides of white, eager Cessnas
parked at the airstrip under the freckling hills
of St. Thomas. The sheds, the brown, functional hangar
are like those of the Occupation in the last war.
The night left a rank smell under the casuarinas,
the villas have fenced-off beaches where the natives walk,
illegal immigrants from unlucky islands
who envy the smallest polyp its right to work.
Here the wetback crab and the mollusc are citizens,
and the leaves have green cards. Bulldozers jerk
and gouge out a hill, but we all know that the dust
is industrial and must be suffered. Soon -
the seas's corrugations are sheets of zinc
soldered by the sun's steady acetylene. This
drizzle that falls now is American rain
stitching stars in the sand. My own corpuscles
are changing as fast. I fear what the migrant envies:
the starry pattern they make-the flag on the post office-
the quality of the dirt, the fealty changing under my foot.

This poem focuses on imagery of multiple different aspects of America, but it is specific imagery that we don't normally think about when it comes to this country. Walcott begins by telling us that "[t]hings here are quietly American," and with the mention of St. Thomas, we can predict that the setting is not really America, but perhaps a Virgin Island in the Caribbean, as Walcott is from Saint Lucia. All of the examples in this poem are little details that were noticed on the island, but they are distinctly American, even though most Americans never realize these.
The poem is filled with observations from chain-link fences to bulldozers, discussing immigration and natives to the country. It is interesting that Walcott says that ball parks are "muttering the word umpire instead of empire." Other countries around the world may have this view that America is an empire, and most can agree that America is an empire in some senses, but America isn't focused on dominating the world. The observations are so unlike any others that it seems to be telling us that America is unknowingly spreading its traditions and characteristics with the rest of the world. The American pastime of baseball is ringing stronger than the idea of conquering and having ultimate rule over the world.
Dozens of images flash through our minds while we read this poem, and we are able to identify with the settings because, once we really think about them, we are able to identify with all of them. America's population is defined as a melting pot because of its mix of people that live here. The many settings displayed in this poem are also, in a sense, a melting pot of American symbols.