“Marry your heart to your right hand”

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I attended last night’s reading of Omeros at Stanford Summer Theater. If this passage doesn’t describe the life of a writer, what does?

At the corner of Bridge
Street, we saw the liner as white as a mirage,
its hull bright as paper, preening with privilege.

“Measure the days you have left, do just that labour
that marries your heart to your right hand: simplify
your life to one emblem, a sail leaving harbour

and sail coming in. All corruption will cry
to be taken aboard. Fame is that white liner
at the end of your street, a city to itself.”

— Derek Walcott, Omeros


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