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Boston, MA, United States

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Love After Love

I've been reading The Time's Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Although it's a story about the love of two people that transcends time, it opens with a poem about learning to love yourself.

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, who 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.

-Dereck Walcott



I spent so many years trying to make a relationship work. Now I realize I should have been learning more about myself and fulfilling those needs.
What does the poem mean to you?

1 comment:

  1. Wow that is great.... really makes you think. Yes I think that you have to love yourself first and foremost before you can have love someone else and have a succesful relationship.

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