Love After Love

I came across a recitation of this poem while listening to a lecture by John Kabat-Zinn, author, philosopher, mindfulness educator, and Director of the Stress Reduction Clinic in Worcester, Massachussetts.

It was written by The Hon. Derek Alton Walcott, OCC (born January 23, 1930), a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was born in Castries, Saint Lucia and who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

The poem nicely sums up (at least to me) how many of us wander away from our true, authentic selves, only to come back home at the end (whatever that end may be).


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 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.


~ Derek Walcott ~