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.
■
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.
■
Hello Friends,
When was the last time you sat down and feasted on your life? Today’s poem by Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott (1930 – 2017) appears in his 1976 collection Sea Grapes. Among his many honors, in 1992 Walcott was the first Caribbean writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Thank you for celebrating poetry month with me.
— Ællen
When was the last time you sat down and feasted on your life? Today’s poem by Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott (1930 – 2017) appears in his 1976 collection Sea Grapes. Among his many honors, in 1992 Walcott was the first Caribbean writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Thank you for celebrating poetry month with me.
— Ællen