My Inner Anthology: Being Alive – Neil Astley (ed.)

Reader Leader Lizzie, recommends and reads from 'Being Alive' - Neil Astley (ed.).

In May the theme for our Daily Readings is inspired by The Reader Bookshelf theme of 'Walking the Earth'.  Our readings this month are about the human journeys – physical and metaphorical – we take to become who we are, about living on and with planet earth. Download our calendar for May.

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