Derek Walcott: From This Far

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

From This Far

The Fortunate Traveller, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1981

414-417

Allusion to Classical figure Orpheus, Agamemnon, Minotaur

Allusion to Classical place Labyrinth, Piraeus

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The poem addresses the Greek poet and Nobel Laureate George Seferis, whose work focuses heavily on the themes of wandering, exile and Greek history and myth.

Further Comment A Greek tanker or, elsewhere, ‘Ferryboat’ carries marble heads, as though over the Styx. The Greek gods have been shipped out but were ‘dead on arrival’; limbless warriors roll in the surf.