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.
Notes
Where Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen’s the pomegranate’s decimation anchored its feast in ancestral lineage and shared domestic memory, Derek Walcott’s Love After Love turns inward to stage a deeply transformative, solitary reunion at one's own door. The ritual act of pulling up a chair, breaking bread, and pouring wine for the estranged self strips away the exhausting performance of external validation, demonstrating that healing from longing begins only when we welcome back the stranger who has loved us our entire life. It crowns August’s theme of Feast as the ultimate sacrament of self-reconciliation, reminding us that the most generous banquet we can ever prepare is the one where we finally sit down and feast on our own life. #poetry #derekwalcott #feast #august #selflove
From THE POETRY OF DEREK WALCOTT, 1948–2013 by Derek Walcott, selected by Glyn Maxwell. Copyright © 2014 by Derek Walcott.