Our literary tour through Castries, St. Lucia, took us to Derek Walcott’s childhood home, located at #17 Chausée Road. The house, once described as a “quaint little gabled cottage with a portico that sported two benches with golden alamanda and poinsettias softening the harshness of the setting sun,” is now empty and forlorn. The air was scented with the irresistible smells of the bakery next door, but the house was sad and derelict. We left, like the poet with his father Warwick in Omeros, down Grass Street towards the port, amid the concern of neighbors, who worried about us being in what they considered a bad part of town.
