Who better to inaugurate this page than the incomparable Derek Walcott? Sure, he's won a Nobel Prize. Sure, his poems speak to the depth of the soul. Sure, he's written and directed plays, collaborated with Paul Simon, painted gorgeous island landscapes, written criticism for the New York Review of Books, influenced many, many students (among them Glyn Maxwell, Ronan Noone, Elizabeth Alexander, and yours truly) over many years. But these are minor things. What is not minor is his ability to destroy the reader with a single well-placed word. To rip a human heart out of its cavity with a phrase. To wreck the veneer of ordinariness over the world. This Derek Walcott does as well as, and sometimes better than, any other poet alive.
You've broken up with someone. Or been broken up with. You've felt the cold hand of loneliness slide over your nape. Yes, you've tried to convince yourself the world isn't ending, that you'll get back on your feet and start over, start better – and you've failed. Derek Walcott has done this also (he is but a man, after all, and probably leaves his towels on the floor after showering too), but he has done better. He has done immeasurably more. He has made art out of suffering.
Witness.
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.
--Derek Walcott, from Sea Grapes (1976)
