I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars. - Derek Walcott

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I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work, I study the stars.

English
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About Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott (born January 23, 1930 – March 17 2017) was a West Indian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who wrote mainly in English. Born in Castries, St. Lucia, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Derek Alton Walcott
Alternative Names: Sir Derek Alton Walcott
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Additional quotes by Derek Walcott

Your wanderer is a phantom from the boy's shore.

Mark you, he does not go; he sends his narrator;
he plays tricks with time because there are two journeys
in every odyssey, one on worried water,

the other crouched and motionless, without noise.
For both, the 'I' is a mast; a desk is a raft
for one, foaming with paper, and dipping the beak

of a pen in its foam, while an actual craft
carries the other to cities where people speak
a different language, or look at him differently,

while the sun rises from the other direction
with its unsettling shadows, but the right journey
is motionless; as the sea moves round an island

that appears to be moving, Jove moves round the heart
with encircling salt, and the slowly travelling hand
knows it returns to the port from which it must start.

Therefore, this is what this island has meant to you,
why my bust spoke, why the sea-swift was sent to you:
to circle yourself and your island with this art.

I do not live in you, I bear
my house inside me, everywhere

until your winters grow more kind
by the dancing firelight of mind

where knobs of brass do not exist
whose doors dissolve in tenderness

House that lets in, at last, those fears
that are its guests, to sit on chairs

feasts on their human faces, and
takes pity simply by the hand

shows her her room, and feels the hum
of wood and brick becoming home.

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