Poem a day

1: Love after Love by Derek Walcott

Read the poem: https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love

I came across ‘Love After Love’ when Matt was in hospital. By then he was just well enough to read in bed: books about neuroplasticity and about the growth mindset. At the time I thought he’d chosen them because they were about teaching; but on one level I must have understood better, because when I read Walcott’s poem it was like a clear note ringing in my mind.

One of the effects of the illness was intermittent memory loss. Matt had been confused about which city we lived in, he had big blanks in the time leading up to getting sick. Unspoken in all the days of visiting and waiting and arguing with doctors was the very real worry that something might have changed — deep down inside, at the core of who he was. The brain is a mysterious universe, even to the people who study it. Everything had become uncertain. But this poem, with its calm understanding, offered comfort and hope. I typed it out and emailed it to him.

He didn’t mention the poem, and neither did I. In the rush of small children and work and hospital visits, I forgot all about it. The books piled up at his bedside. He read and read about the nature of the brain. He grew stronger. When he came home, we decorated balloons and taped them to the front door.

A few months later, while I was at work, he sent me an email. No title, no message, just the text of Walcott’s poem. That evening when I asked did he remember I’d sent it to him in hospital, he shook his head.

'I don’t,’ he said.