Love After Love by Derek Walcott

Love After Love
By 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 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 image from the mirror,
Sit. Feast on your life.






I have been a fan of Derek Walcott for a very long time since reading some of his poems many years ago in a magazine. Still, I was surprised to hear of his winning the Nobel Prize in 1992. Still, reading this poem lately, it came in a period of time that I was putting myself together anew and attempting to reclaim my body and part of my life I had let separate from myself. Again this poet astonishes me for the poem seemed to be what I was looking for, the feelings I was feeling but did not have the words he did. Ah yes, this is what I needed....

"The Journey" by Mary Oliver

This poem endeared me to Mary Oliver as no other poem she has written and inspired me when I needed inspiration. I have seen it quoted by other poets and readers when they themselves needed help in picking themselves up as all of us needed at one time or another.

"The Journey" first appeared in Mary Oliver's collection, "Dream Work", in 1986.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice---
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do---
determined to save
the only life that you could save.