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.
Summary and Analysis
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Editors Rating
Meaning of the Poem
Love After Love is a a lyric poem published in 1971 by Derek Walcott, included in his Collected Poems, 1948–1984 (1986). Derek Walcott write this poem that makes self-love sound like a good thing? In “Love After Love,” the speaker urges the reader to “love again the stranger who was your self,” a stranger who has “loved you all your life”. in this poem Derek Walcott invites us to dive deeper, offering readers an imaginative exercise in self-love.
