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
"Love after Love"
*
Viennese Roses
Pink, from the
Rose Garden in
September 2008
Volksgarten
Repost
First published
in 2008
Images
© by Merisi
Mmmm, Klasse!
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed.
ReplyDeleteProfound poem and lovely images. And yesterday's post - oh to be in a hammock in the Augarten gardens! Has Vienna's summer this year been as good as this, or has it been as strange as other parts of Europe, I'm wondering?
ReplyDeleteSimply beautiful. And a nice way to start my day.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child, I would make pretend roses and put on my mother's lip rouge and then kiss the pretend roses all over to give it colour, these roses look sunkissed, but made me remember when,oh those many years gone by~
ReplyDeleteThis post is like a delicious dessert!
ReplyDeleteCatherine
Hi Merisi,
ReplyDeleteI love your blog, been lurking here for several years. Also enjoy your comments on TIC.
This is exactly what I needed to hear, and what I am striving for.
kp
Arija, Marcheline, Simona:
ReplyDeleteIt is, isn't it? One of my favorite poems.
Walcott was recently awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize (not to forget the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992).
Karen,
towards the end of July and the first weeks of August, the weather was a bit checkered. Still, in my book, it has been a lovely summer so far. Right now, it looks as if summer insists to stay, and with a vengeance, temperatures hovering just a degree or two belowi a 100°F (38°C). Thank goodness, nights are cool.
Mary Howell Cromer,
ReplyDeletewhat lovely childhood memory, such creativeness and vivid imagination! The roses here did in fact remind me of soft crêpe paper roses.
A Thousand Clapping Hands,
Catherine, that is a delicious interpretation! Rose petal sorbet?
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteI love this poem ever since I read it for the first time, it really touched me and every time I read it again, it fills me with an inner joy. Feast on your life, now!
a feast, indeed ... Can't stop feeding my eyes on those pictures ...
ReplyDeleteMarie-Noëlle
Marie-Noëlle,
ReplyDeletemerci! :-)
I love this poem! And the pictures -- you capture roses so well!
ReplyDeleteExquisite!!
ReplyDeleteLpve Walcott