Omeros

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, substance use, and racism.

The most important bird in Omeros is the ocean-crossing sea swift. Its flight symbolizes a specific kind of healing—one that occurs after reconnection with heritage and the past. Achille’s hallucinatory vision of his ancestral village begins when a sea swift guides him across the Atlantic Ocean to the “other shore” (42), rewinding the journey of the Middle Passage that brought his ancestors to the Caribbean. This reverse migration is healing—Achille meets the ghost of his father in his homeland and learns about the cultures and traditions that were left behind. Symbolically, the flight of the sea swift stitches together Achille’s past and future and his African ancestry and his life on Saint Lucia. Later, another sea swift carries from Africa to the Caribbean the seed that grows into the plant that cures Philoctete’s wound. Derek describes the symbolic significance of the sea swift as a way to adhere together disparate parts of his poem like a “hyphen stitched its seam” (319). The sea swift represents how arduous journeys—both physical and mental—can heal.

After being rescued at sea, Achille spots a black frigate bird taking mackerel from a rival.