Derek Walcott (1930–2017), born on the island of Saint Lucia, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. His breakthrough came with his 1962 collection, In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960. Shifting between patois and English, Walcott celebrated the Caribbean while investigating the legacy of colonialism. Spirituality, the notion of the poem as prayer, also informed his work. Perhaps Walcott’s greatest achievement was the epic poem Omeros, singled out by the Nobel committee. His most recent works include Tiepolo’s Hound; The Prodigal; Selected Poems; White Egrets; and Morning Paramin (2016).

Photograph by Bert Nienhuis.

Bleecker Street, Summer

by Derek Walcott

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,
for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,
for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom
of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!

When I press summer dusks together, it is
a month of street accordions and sprinklers
laying the dust, small shadows running from me.
People on couch
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