Derek Walcott: To Return to the Trees

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

To Return to the Trees

Sea Grapes, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1976

339-341

Allusion to Classical figure Atlas, Seneca

Relationship to Classical text Seneca is described as a ‘fabled bore’, his Latin ‘gnarled’ and ‘laborious’.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The image of Atlas echoes that of the biblical Samson in the preceding lines.

Further Comment Walcott plays on the image of the ageing poet, morphing senex into Seneca