Today’s poet, Sir Derek Walcott (1930 – 2017) was born in the West Indies and wove its spells around the globe with glorious words. Those words brought him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
Robert Graves wrote that Walcott “handles English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most, if not any, of his contemporaries”.
It you want to revel totally in his words, try his novel length OMEROS. Fortunately for those of us who just want a quick, but important visit, there are shorter poems.
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 youall 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.
