The main poet of Saint Lucia
On love after love
Walcott Derek/Qalam
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 image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was a Trinidadian-born poet who later moved to the United States and became one of the most famous poets in the world. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.