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*
The Hon. Derek Alton Walcott, born in 1930, is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962). His later collections include Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), The Prodigal (2004) and White Egrets (2010), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Both his grandmothers were said to have been the descendants of slaves. His father was a Bohemian watercolourist who died when Derek and his twin brother, Roderick, were only a few years old. The experience of growing up on the isolated volcanic island, an ex-British colony, has had a strong influence on Walcott's life and work.
To read more about the poet and his work, visit PWF: Derek Walcott
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