This poem found its way into my life twice this week and it was the kind of wonderful serendipity that makes you wish there was a less fancy/pretentious word for it. Simply put, it has been a rough two months...
...a lot of rejections from various things I applied for - some outright, others more deliberated. At some level, it feels like everything is blocked, stuck; even the things that are working out are glacial. I want to be frantic. But at another level, I know that all I can do is try and try and until something works out. But the last few weeks in school definitely feel (very very very) trying with deadlines and assignments and group work and work and a lack of motivation, stemming partly from the need to be done with this. I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I do, both when I first unexpectedly heard it and then when I read it.
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
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