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Love After Love by Derek Walcott

Love After Love
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.

MARGINALIA

This poem brought me to my knees years ago. It still makes me weep today.

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Collected Poems 1948-1984

SHARED WITH GRATITUDE

This poem appeared in Collected Poems 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)

ABOUT DEREK WALCOTT

Born on the island of Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, poet and playwright Derek Walcott was trained as a painter but turned to writing as a young man. He published his first poem in the local newspaper at the age of 14. Five years later, he borrowed $200 to print his first collection, 25 Poems, which he distributed on street corners. Walcott’s major breakthrough came with the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), a book which celebrates the… (more)

Read more poems by Derek Walcott • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library

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