Names: Derek Walcott
Names: Derek Walcott - for Edward Brathwaite I My race began as the sea began, with no nouns, and with no horizon, with pebbles under my tongue, with a different fix on the stars. But now my race is here, in the sad oil of Levantine eyes, in the flags of Indian fields. I began with no memory, I began with no future, but I looked for that moment when the mind was halved by a horizon. I have never found that moment when the mind was halved by a horizon-- for the goldsmith from Benares, the stone-cutter from Canton, as a fishline sinks, the horizon sinks in the memory. Have we melted into a mirror, leaving our souls behind? The goldsmith from Benares, the stone-cutter from Canton, the bronzesmith from Benin. A sea-eagle screams from the rock, and my race began like the osprey with that cry, that terrible vowel, that I! Behind us all the sky folded as history folds over a fishline, and the foam foreclosed with nothing in our ha...