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.
Sancho’s Wave
Stepping through sunset
from a Mexican beach in May
Philomen hoists aloft
a surfboard like a spear
coffee parchment skin
scrawled on by age
shoe glue feet bare
cobblestone sure as a wave tipping
carving past
outstretched tourists
dog shit, fire catchers,
waifs chasing pesos
eyes fixed on where he lives
squint spray earned
switching ‘twixt horizon and shore
at dawn he eats
eggs and chorizo
rushes to meet the break of himself
not on the balance of the board
nor the crush of his failure but
the exhalation of sweet pneumata
while Faust and Mephistopheles
engaged with flying a kite ignore
Gretchen, who greets Philomen in the night
the door remains open
unaware it is doubt that keeps it so
even if she knows why.
A flower simply is
A flower is a lovesome thing
whether tight in a bud
or with petals most faded
the fragrance lasts longer
than the thorn and thistle
stagnant water at the base
in a clear glass vase
only wanting for a
gentle hand
to pour the brackish
down the drain
go – collect the rainwater
that gathers from your
downspout
choose a new pot
one you threw yourself into
on the potters’ wheel
for clay is most happy
in the good potter’s hands
and the rose with a thorn
is the one most worth
plucking.
