The poem is itself a mirror.

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

How can I turn from Africa and live?

The classics can console. But not enough.

I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?