"Love After Love" by Derek Walcott (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

We are all trapped in a spiritual isolation, solitary confinement. The nearest we get to sharing another person's nervous system is during sex when there is an electrical or nervous connection.

Love for another is love for our own empathy with them, for the image that we have created of them. The greatest disappointment of love comes when that image proves to be false - but how could it be anything else? We fashioned it to suit our selves. So what can we love except that which we have created by our selves, in our selves?

"You find as you are giving up the ghost
That those who loved you best despised you most."
...Hilaire Belloc.

Derek Walcott is the greatest living poet according to many authorities. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1992. A short biography is here:
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Wa...

The paintings are:
The Mirror, 1896, Sir Frank Dicksee
The Mirror, 1911, Frank Markham Skipworth

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.

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[blackops417]

keep the focus on Self. No one can or will ever love you more than Self. I love this poem.

[aliaandreadi]

thanks for the beautiful notes u attached to this vid spokenverse. your voice rocks btw :)

[beaulieu4008]

There is a pull - a magnetic attraction. No words need to be spoken. A nod. A clasp of hands. You know you belong together. Aside: I believe the course of love has a beginning, middle, and an end. When it ends, love has run its course. You have spent a lifetime with that person no matter how long you have stayed together.

[TheAmphitheatre]

I often hear this advice and am always disappointed to hear it, and my response is directed toward your sentiment that we fashion love to suit ourselves. Although I believe this to be true, since it seems to me common practice to cultivate love when you find yourself a younger spouse to wed or what have you, I rather not think such manipulation went into forging the relationship, and so I find that love is better uncoerced. Yet perhaps that why I have not been in many relationships.

[TheAmphitheatre]

"You find as you are giving up the ghost

That those who loved you best despised you most."

...Hilaire Belloc.

I had discovered this to be true at a very young age.

I find it terribly interesting.

[jeremyshambles]

thanks for all the beautiful poems, have you ever read any james mangan?, he has many wonder-full gems, take care

[lewars1912]

>>> Poetry is always best read aloud.

[joelysnowflake]

also, love the painting - coincidentally I have it on my wall at home!

[joelysnowflake]

Thank you so much. Poetry is a completely different experience when heard aloud.

[IntellectualAmy]

Brilliant. I could listen to your readings all day. Thank You.