I LOVE Y0U / ME

"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 yourself.

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.

~ Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986

This poem was taken from Oprah's "THE LIFE YOU WANT WEEKEND" Tour