DEREK WALCOTT- 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.
JOHN CIARDI – Saturday, March 6
One morning you step out, still in pajamas
to get your Times from the lawn where it lies folded
to the British pound, which has dropped below $2.00
for the first time since the sun stopped never
setting on it, and you pick it up –
the paper, that is – because it might mean something,
in which case someone ought to know about it
(a free and enlightened citizenry, for instance)
and there, just under it – white, purple, yellow –
are the first three crocuses half open, one
sheared off where the day hit it, and you pick it up,
and put it in water, and when your wife comes down
it’s on the table. And that’s what day it is.
IMTIAZ DHARKER – Eggplant
Impossible to hold,
you have to cradle it,
let it slide against your cheek.
If this could speak,
this eggplant,
it would have the voice
of a plump child-god,
purple-blue and sleek
with happiness,
full of milk,
ready to sleep.