Quote of the Day (Derek Walcott, With a Sailors’ Song)

“In the middle of the harbor
A fish breaks the Sabbath
With a silvery leap.
The scales fall from him
In a tinkle of church bells;
The town streets are orange
With the week-ripened sunlight,
Balanced on the bowsprit
A young sailor is playing
His grandfather’s chantey
On a trembling mouth organ.”— Saint Lucian poet and playwright—and Nobel Literature laureate—Derek Walcott (1930-2017), “A Sea-Chantey,” in Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

(Picture of Derek Walcott taken at his honorary dinner, Amsterdam, May 20, 2008; permission is granted by Michiel van Kempen, secretary and treasurer of the Werkgroep Caraibische Letteren, The Netherlands; by courtesy of the photographer Bert Nienhuis.)