Love After Love (Derek Walcott)
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 yourself.
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.
With thanks to White Hot Truth – I’ve read this poem before but haven’t seen it in a long time.
I love it.