That is what Nobel laureate Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930–March 17, 2017) conjures up in his shamanic poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” — an eternal vision for reprieve from the worst in us, written in the final years of the Cold War, the war that could have ended the world but was abated, not because we are perfect but because we are perfectible, because peace is possible, because, as Maya Angelou wrote in another eternal mirror of a poem, we are the possible. the huge net of the shadows of this earth “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” appears in Walcott’s indispensable Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (public library), which also gave us his “Love After Love” — one of the greatest poems ever written.
Author: Maria Popova
Published at: 2025-12-20 19:02:11
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