Love after Love

[Giulia]

“Love after Love”

BY 

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 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.

---

“Love after Love” from COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

[elvan]

WOW!

[Giulia]

That's what I thought when I heard it yesterday.

[elvan]

It is absolutely stunning.

[PRAIRIEROSELADY]

Perfect! Awesome!

I see this as, someday knowing the inner being, I would never let out. That person has always hid behind my addiction, all these many decades. I don't know that person...How could anyone else??????????

Already told hubby,a different woman was returning in a couple weeks.

[Christine13]

Amazing!  So beautiful.  Yup, I am finding myself after the great love of my life has passed.

This is very comforting.

xo