Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Received via email - Love after Love

Love After Love

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,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

--Derek Walcott

2 comments:

Churlita said...

I love Derek Walcott. I went to a reading of his when I was a college and fell in love with his work.

That poem is so true also. The older I get, the more I like/love myself. I'm just sad it took me so long.

NoRegrets said...

yes, it's a nice poem...