News at Eleven: The last leaves fell like notes from a piano

and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

These self-devouring figures, turning the toolkit of poetry into metaphor (the cane fields are "set in stanzas," his "ocean kept turning blank pages"), speak to something almost unsaid--writing was [Derek] Walcott's escape from the islands. The metaphors whisper their quiet acknowledgment of guilt.

from The New York Times: The Poet of Exile

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