love after love

After I posted this, I realized it already had a place on this blog, and on at least one other, suntreeriver: poetry and other passions, but it so bears reviewing, rereading and believing again!

Derek Walcott's Nobel citation:

for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.

From my fall 2001 management class, this poem - by the 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature - says it all!

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.