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CultureSpiegeloog 412: HappinessWords to Start

Words to Start: 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.

Anne Sophie Giacobello

Author Anne Sophie Giacobello

Anne Sophie Giacobello (1996) is a first-year Research Master’s Student specialising in Brain and Cognition. She likes thinking about the connections between psychology, politics and society and never leaves the house without her journal, a pen and her current read.

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