【2015.02.09 Happy Birthday and 致2000听友】司令最爱的一首诗Love After Love

Happy Birthday dear sir! 来听Love after Love Love After Love by Derek Walcott 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. 去年英国出了一本书叫做“poems that make grown men cry”，其中Tom推荐的就是这一首。 Tom在诗前的推介短文中说： I read this poem often, once a month at least. In the madness and mayhem of modern life, where every man seems committed to an endless search for the approval of esteem of his fellows and peers, no matter what the cost, this poem reminds me of a basic truth: that we are, as we are, "enough". Most of us are motivated deep down by a sense of insufficiency, a need to be better, stronger, faster; to work harder, to be more committed, more kind, more self-sufficient, more successful. We are driven by a sense that we are not, as we are, "enough". But this short poem by Derek Walcott is like a declaration of unconditional love. It’s like the embrace of an old friend. We are each of us whole, perfectly imperfect, enough. "Feast on your life" feels like permission, as though Walcott is calling time on all the madness, the mayhem, the insecurity, the neuroses, the drama, and with a big, broad, kind smile, he brings us to an awareness of the present moment, calm and peaceful, and to a feeling of gratitude for everything that we love. I read it to my dearest friends after dinner once, and to my family at Christmas, and they started crying. Which always, unfailingly, makes me cry.