Love After Love

Continuing on Black History Month a Derek Walcott poem. If it seems familiar it may be because it's in The Time Travellers Wife.

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 stanger 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

or 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

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