derek walcott

• 1992'de nobel edebiyat ödülünü alan şair. saint lucia adasında doğmuş, bu küçük volkanik adada geçirdiği çocukluk yılları şiirlerini büyük ölçüde etkilemiş.
  
  "crusoe's island" isimli şiirinden:
  
  "upon this rock the bearded hermit built
  his eden:
  goats, corn crop, fort, parasol, garden,
  bible for sabbath, all the joys
  but one
  which sent him howling for a human voice.
  exiled by a flaming sun
  the rotting nut, bowled in the surf,
  became his own brain rotting from the guilt
  of heaven without his kind,
  crazed by such paradisal calm
  the spinal shadow of a palm
  built keel and gunwale in his mind."
• obama'nın da takip ettiği yazar.
  
  ben demiyorum, o diyor: (bkz: http://www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=789058)
• 17 mart günü hayatını kaybeden şair.
• derek walcott
  
  the sea ıs history
  
  where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
  where is your tribal memory? sirs,
  in that grey vault. the sea
  has locked them all. the sea is history.
  
  first, there was the heaving oil
  of nothing, heavy as chaos,
  then, like a light at the end of a tunnel,
  
  the lantern of a lonely caravel,
  and that was genesis.
  then there were the packed cries,
  the shit, the moaning;
  
  exodus.
  bone soldered by coral to bone
  on the tilting sea-floor
  mantled by the benediction of the shark’s shadow,
  
  that was the ark of the covenant.
  then came through the plucked wires
  of sunlight on the sea-floor
  
  the plangent harps of the babylonian bondage
  as the cowries clustered white on the manacles
  of the drowned women,
  
  and those were the ivory bracelets
  of the song of solomon,
  and the ocean kept turning its empty pages
  
  because this was not history,
  then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
  who sank without tombs
  
  brigands who barbecued cattle,
  leaving their charred ribs like palmleaves on the shore,
  then the foaming, rabid maw
  
  of the tidal wave swallowing port royal,
  and that was jonah,
  and where is your renaissance?
  
  sir, it is locked in the sea-sands
  out there past the reef’s moiling shelf,
  where the man-o-wars floated down;
  
  strop on these goggles, ı’ll guide you there myself,
  it’s all subtle and submarine,
  through colonnades of coral
  
  past the gothic windows of sea-fans,
  to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed
  blinks, weighted by its jewels like a queen,
  
  and these groyned ribs with barnacles
  pitted like stone,
  are the cathedrals,
  
  and the furnace before the hurricanes
  and the bones ground by windmills
  into marl and corn-meal,
  
  and that was lamentations
  that was just lamentations
  it was not history;
  
  then came, like scum on the river’s drying lip
  the brown reeds of villages
  mantling and congealing into towns,
  
  and at evening, the midges’ choirs
  and above them, the spires
  lancing the side of god
  
  bleeding to sunset and that was the new testament.
  
  then came the white sister’s clapping
  like the waves’ progress,
  and that was emancipation—
  
  jubilation, o jubilation—
  vanishing swiftly
  as the sea’s lace dries in the sun,
  
  but that was not history,
  that was only faith,
  and then each rock broke into its own nation,
  
  then came the synod of flies,
  then came the secretarial heron,
  then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote,
  
  fireflies with bright ideas
  and bats like jetting ambassadors
  and the mantis, like khaki police,
  
  and the furred caterpillars of judges
  examining each page closely,
  and then in the dark ears of ferns
  
  and in the salt chuckle of rocks
  with their sea-pools, there was the sound
  like a rumour without any echo
  
  of history, really beginning.
  
  *from issue no. 74 (fall–winter 1978)
• "zaman gelecek.
  coşkuyla.
  kutlayacaksın kendini varınca
  kendi kapına, kendi aynanda.
  her biri gülümseyecek ötekinin hoş karşılayışına.
  
  diyeceksin ki, şuraya otur. ye.
  kendin olan yabancıyı seveceksin yine.
  şarap sun. ekmek sun. yüreğini sun
  yüreğine, yaşadığın sürece
  
  seni seven yabancıya, başkası için
  ihmal ettiğin kendine, seni ezbere bilene.
  indir kitaplığın rafından aşk mektuplarını,
  
  fotoğrafları, umutsuz notları,
  soy kendi yansımanı aynadan.
  otur. yaşamınla bir ziyafet çek kendine."
  
  kaynak