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Love After Love by Derek Walcott   
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  Love After Love

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8.6 /10
(92 votes)



  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.


Anonymous submission.

Derek Walcott


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Read poems about / on: mirror, smile, love, heart, life, time

 
  Comments about this poem (Love After Love by Derek Walcott )
Click here to write your comments about this poem (Love After Love by Derek Walcott )
 
  Raven Schwan-noble  (1/26/2009 6:26:00 PM)

It is a poem that speaks to your heart, as you imerge like a butterfly, from the depths of grief, after the loss of your heartmate of 30 yrs.
  Shae Flight  (7/15/2008 10:23:00 PM)

hey this is a really nice poem
  Celia Keajls  (6/15/2008 9:45:00 AM)

Very beautiful shows exactly how one may feel <3

fine, fine write!

Celia
  Sonya Domergue  (8/17/2007 5:07:00 AM)

I have just read this poem for the first time and felt electrified by its lines. It could, of course, express the post-colonial experience of rediscovering one's cultural identity. It also works on the personal level, especially for women. So many of us have put our lives on the backburner and even when there no longer is any need to do so, continue to exist in that mode. Some will go through the elation of 'greeting' themselves again. Like all good poetry, this one spans the personal and impersonal; the finite and the infinite.
  Yoonoos Peerbocus  (8/4/2007 11:49:00 AM)

the self that i am rediscovered
  Alexandra Gray  (2/19/2005 5:43:00 PM)

This poem is an expression of Walcott's lost love and recovery. It expresses his belief that peple look for affection outside of themselves for so long, and that one can find that connection for which they have for so long strived to grasp. But, like anything has so much of one's self invested in it, that connection is lost. In his opinion, it is vital that one look within himself to find contentment, otherwise life will be filled with hurt and mourning.
His opinions probably formed due to his three failed marriages.

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7/4/2009 7:04:33 AM . You Are Here: Love After Love by Derek Walcott

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