Poetry Club #2: Love After Love by Derek Walcott

I loved last week’s poem thanks so much to Carla for recommending that poem. I do feel that a week spent with that poem has let it sink into the storehouse of my heart. I shall be thinking about my bluebird forevermore.

Logistically I’ve decided to try something a little different. Last week I tried pinning the poem as a way of continuing engagement. During the week I remembered the chat function so I’m going to start a thread on the poem and we can post our thoughts in there. I assume we get notifications about messages in there so it should work nicely for this.

This week’s poem was recommended by Belinda. One thing I hoped for with this poetry group was to encounter the poems that have affected your lives and to get a glimpse into why. I think of these reflections as a little bait attached to the poem as we cast it into our depths. Belinda obliged with the following reflection:

I think it is the sense of welcoming of one’s own self like an old familiar friend that I appreciate most deeply in Love After Love.

It’s a bit like Neruda writing, “I want to return to what ( who?) I haven’t been ..”

The gift of meeting with my better self , the self that is yearning perhaps for a bit more self acceptance and just plain welcome - the one whom I have ignored for another, the one who has waited patiently & who knows me by heart .. That one.

This poem sings to me of acceptance, patience and welcome; three things I would love to know more of - towards myself and towards others .

Thanks for that, Belinda. That was beautiful. Without further ado:

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 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.