Friday Poetry: Derek Walcott

Searching for Friday Poetry tonight, I opened the scrapbook my mother created for my high school graduation; she asked all our family friends to send or write poems to contribute to the scrapbook, to honor what was then my accomplishment and love as a poet myself. This is a poem that my downstairs neighbor offered. It sounds like a truly wonderful way to be.

Derek Walcott
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.