Love after Love

It's New Zealand Poetry day tomorrow.  As an entre to tomorrow's entry, here's one of my favourite non New Zealand poems.  The poet is Derek Walcott and he was introduced to me (and others) by Professor Manhire - hence the NZ connection.  It's one form of describing the "journey".  It resonates a lot for 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 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.


Hold on until tomorrow, when I will try and include a NZ bike poem subject to being able to find it on Google - I know there is one by James Brown.