Feb 17, 2011

Poet's Nook: Derek Walcott's "Love After Love"


Derek Walcott


I particularly like this piece by Derek Walcott. This poem can be interpreted on both a personal & socio-historical level (specifically, from a post-colonial context). I tend to favor a broader rendering of this poem as it brings to mind the gender, race & class struggles that continue to this day. This poem can also resonate powerfully with many women who sacrificed their lives for their husbands, children, lovers & forgot themselves in the process, but rediscovered who they were in the end.

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.

Take from it what you will, it's a beautiful thing!

OneLove

::MME::

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