Derek Walcotts' Love After Love

I posted this poem first on September 14, 2007, but felt moved to re-post now. Love After Love is a most beautiful and surreal poem. Walcott is the Caribbean's own Nobel Laureate (St. Lucia).

I posted it last on July 19, 2009. There is something to be said here. I think this is my poem of the decade. Anyway, I am called to it by my friend of the Cloudcutter Chronicles blog.

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.