In case you need an antidote to Valentine’s Day, from a Nobel Prize winner.
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.
Actually, just mentioning Derek Walcott’s name is an antidote to Valentine’s Day. Dude is sliiiimy.
@FashionablyEvil: True.
Excellent truth here. Sliiiimy why?
@BIP: He’s been accused—credibly, IMO—of being sleazy to female students, including downgrading ones who refused his advances. Here’s a pretty good blogpost on the topic:
http://www.toothsoup.com/blottingpaper/?p=779
Still a great poem, though.