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.

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself-
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags-
This is what I am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pietas.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immorality among these!
Cold blanks approach us: 
They move in a hurry.

‘Apprehensions’ by Sylvia Plath

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—
 
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are—
 
None may teach it—Any—
‘Tis the Seal Despair—
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air—
 
When it comes, the Landscape listens—
Shadows—hold their breath—
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death—

“There’s a Certain Slant of Light” (258) by Emily Dickinson

Rereading in preparation for the thingy later and had forgotten how heavy (but sort of… internally heavy) light feels in this poem.

Particularly apropos of any meaningful reading experience, I think: “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us— / We can find no scar, / But internal difference, / Where the meanings are—”. I used to read so much more poetry than I do nowadays (mainly because I’ve been focusing on novels and plays at university)… makes me sad.