POETRY CORNER: Arrive at your own door: on feathered things and finally meeting the self

Being guided by hope, and not fear, we can liberate ourselves and each other.

Derek Walcott’s famous poem Love After Love invokes hope, though not in the conventional sense of yearning for circumstances to miraculously get better. Instead, I think it proffers the confidence that a fractured self can become whole again.

His poem begins with the following premise: “The time will come...” That simple promise is in itself an act of hope. It is militant and it assures the listener that some future, to an improved degree that is different from today, brighter, is possible – whether the present is marked by loneliness, grief, estrangement or some other curse.

It says that there’s hope for self-recovery. The speaker in the poem shows that people often lose touch with themselves in relationships, in ambition and in how the obligations of life are faced. Hope abides in believing that “the stranger” who was your own self can be revived.

Each of us has undoubtedly been brought to self-inspection, aware of our own existence. “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.”

Families, friends, villages, must gather around a table to eat and celebrate. Things can get better, they should get better, they will get better – else what type of room for optimism can there be in this world?

Such a get-together doesn’t have to be the last supper, God forbid! That particular meal took place shortly before Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion and death. But could Walcott have been referring to hope following suffering, instead of the end of hope?Could the person being spoken to in his poem have undergone heartbreak?

The voice is probably speaking to someone emerging from some kind of distress. But rather than urging them to find another relationship, to abandon themselves, the voice suggests something more enduring: a ceasefire with the self. Hope through acceptance, rather than escape, for the only escape out of this life is death. Abandonment is tantamount to suicide.

How are we doing with our own inward journey in southern Africa, especially with respect to the aftereffects of apartheid? Have we invited ourselves and each other to “sit” and “feast” at the table of our national self? Have we understood that peace comes not from external validation by others, nor from blaming someone else, but from learning to value one’s own existence, individually or, better, as a community? “Sit. Feast on your life,” O beloved country!

Unlike many poems about hope that focus on changing the world or overcoming adversity, Walcott’s hope is psychological and spiritual. It offers the knowledge of a true shrink: healing is possible, through identity reclaimed and expressed, because self-love can replace self-neglect.