Feast on your life. Goodbye Derek Walcott

I’ve just heard the news that the poet Derek Walcott has died. 

This is one of my favourite poems, and it was written by him.

It seems appropriate to feast on his poem which is about love and life and death.

Love After Love

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 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.

*****

It’s such a powerful poem about looking at yourself as you really are, with all honesty. Past youth. Accepting the person who looks back at you from the mirror. What’s left of the person you were? Where can you find yourself? In your letters? Photographs? 

Only you know who you really are and you’ll have to face your own fears, shortcomings, and virtues.

Rejoice in the knowledge of your own identity. 

What does this poem say to you?