Love After Love

Perhaps because of my many trips to St. Lucia over the past 2 years, I have decided to reacquaint myself with the only Caribbean Nobel Laureate in Literature – Derek Walcott. I have fallen in love with this poem, which is one of his most well-known. It speaks to my soul.

Love After Love
The day 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.
~ Derek Walcott