Poem in My Pocket

Today is Poem in Your Pocket day, a celebration of which I am newly aware, even though it began right here in New York City in 2002. This is the poem I will be carrying in my pocket. It is one of my favorites, I've posted it on this blog before. It's by the St. Lucian poet, playwright, essayist, painter and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature, Derek Walcott.

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.

Derek Walcott