But drunkenly, or secretly, we swore, Disciples of that astigmatic saint, That we would never leave the island Until we had put down, in paint, in words, As palmists learn the network of a hand, All of its sunken, leaf-choked ravines, Every neglected, self-pitying inlet Muttering in brackish dialect, the ropes of mangroves From which old soldier crabs slipped Surrendering to slush, Each ochre track seeking some hilltop and Losing itself in an unfinished phrase, Under sand shipyards where the burnt-out palms Inverted the design of unrigged schooners, Entering forests, boiling with life, Goyave, corrosol, bois-canot, sapotille. Days! The sun drumming, drumming, Past the defeated pennons of the palms, Roads limp from sunstroke, Past green flutes of the grass The ocean cannonading, come! Wonder that opened like the fan Of the dividing fronds On some noon-struck sahara, Where my heart from its rib cage yelped like a pup After clouds of sanderlings rustily wheeling The world on its ancient, Invisible axis, The breakers slow-dolphining over more breakers, To swivel our easels down, as firm As conquerors who had discovered home. Derek Walcott
About This Quote

In this quote from William Shakespeare, he is portraying the world as a place that is full of suffering and hurt. In his own words he speaks of the ocean and the pain that comes from its waves and how it can cause people to suffer and fall down and get up and fail and rise again. He also mentions the ocean in relation to his own life and how it can be used to reflect on his own life and what has happened in his own life.

Source: Another Life: Fully Annotated

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More Quotes By Derek Walcott
  1. Who is the man who can speak to the strong? Where is the fool who can talk to the wise? Men who are dead now have learnt this long, Bitter is wisdom that fails when it tries.
  2. Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.
  3. But drunkenly, or secretly, we swore, Disciples of that astigmatic saint, That we would never leave the island Until we had put down, in paint, in words, As palmists learn the network of a hand, All of its sunken, leaf-choked ravines, Every neglected, self-pitying inlet...
  4. As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re not here– we’re not put on earth– to shape it anyway we want.. You want something to happen with poetry, but it doesn’t...
  5. The future happens. No matter how much we scream.
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