Is this poem about death, about a body laid to rest in the grave? In particular the line about ants walking over the eyelids makes me think so.
EARTH
Let the day grow on you upward
through your feet,
the vegetal knuckles,
to your knees of stone,
until by evening you are a black tree;
feel, with evening,
the swifts thicken your hair,
the new moon rising out of your forehead,
and the moonlit veins of silver
running from your armpits
like rivulets under white leaves.
Sleep, as ants
cross over your eyelids.
You have never possessed anything
as deeply as this.
This is all you have owned
from the first outcry
through forever;
you can never be dispossessed.
-Derek Walcott
Gladsome Lights 
We live forever somewhere.
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If it is, then it is about a life fulfilled.
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“Is this poem about death, about a body laid to rest in the grave?” I think so. And about the vanity of our lives: “This is all you have owned, from the first outcry through forever; you can never be dispossessed.” Ecclesiastes 1:2-8 KJV “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity” And: “All is dust, all is ashes, all is shadow. …” Funeral Orthodox service
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Thank you so much for helping me to look at the poem more carefully. If we have hope in the Resurrection, we – our bodies – won’t mind the “discomforts” that are described in this poem — and those tickly feelings on our eyelids and in our armpits are not pleasant to consider. But if that is all there is, which the poet may have believed, it is truly a sad image. May God have mercy on us.
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True. I think this is a very sad poem, and I feel that the poet may have believed that this is all there is. Lord have mercy
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