Small, moist, insignificant words

Love after love

A short beautiful poem by Derek Walcott on loving yourself. Sometimes in a relationship and even when with friends, we give so much to the other person that we forget to give to ourselves. We’re so busy becoming the other person, mingling our identity with their identity in order to become one that we forget who we originally were. This sweet poem teaches us how to rediscover ourselves.

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 yourself.
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.

Derek Walcott