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 with 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 your heart.

Take down the loveletters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
feel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.