Brain Food #631
A little break
Thoughts of the day
A brief poem for today, before Brain Food takes a little break for recuperation.
Though Walcott’s poem is referencing heartbreak, it does not have to be directly related to it to be appreciated. Ultimately, it is about self-love, and the most important and most neglected relationship we can ever have in our lifetime: the one we have with ourselves.
Until next week.
Love after love
by Derek Walcott
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.
A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, less an act of vanity, more one of self-acknowledgement and self-preservation. As she said, “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”
