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Mindful Poetry: "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott

Writer's picture: Stacy DiGregorioStacy DiGregorio


A person’s reflection with hands on a pink mirrored surface surrounded by purple flowers and grass. The image has a dreamy, ethereal vibe.

Love yourself…it’s going to be ok.

I adore everything about this poem by Derek Walcott:


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 have 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, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

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