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Each lover has some theory of his own
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone:
Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone
That really stirs the senses, when awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.
Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;
He cannot join his image in the lake
So long as he assumes he is alone.
The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,
Are always up to mischief, though, and take
The universe for granted as their own.
The elderly, like Proust, are always prone
To think of love as a subjective fake;
The more they love, the more they feel alone.
Whatever view we hold, it must be shown
Why every lover has a wish to make
Some other kind of otherness his own:
Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.
For what as easy
For what though small,
For what is well
Because between,
To you simply
From me I mean
Who goes with who
The bedclothes say
As I and you
Go kissed away,
The data given,
The senses even
Fate is not late,
Nor the speech rewritten,
Nor one word forgotten,
Said at the start
About heart,
By heart, for heart.
Sharp and silent in the
Clear October lighting
Of a Sunday morning
The great city lies;
And I at a window
Looking over water
At the world of Business
With a lover's eyes.
All mankind, I fancy,
When anticipating
Anything exciting
Like a rendezvous,
Occupy the time in
Purely random thinking,
For when love is waiting
Logic will not do.
Much as he would like to
Concentrate completely
On the precious Object,
Love has not the power:
Goethe put it neatly;
No one cares to watch the
Loveliest sunset after
Quarter of an hour.
Malinowski, Rivers,
Benedict and others
Show how common culture
Shapes the separate lives:
Matrilineal races
Kill their mothers' brothers
In their dreams and turn their
Sisters into wives.
Who when looking over
Faces in the subway,
Each with its uniqueness,
Would not, did he dare,
Ask what forms exactly
Suited to their weakness
Love and desperation
Take to govern there.
Would not like to know what
Influence occupation
Has on human vision
Of the human fate:
Do all clerks for instance
Pigeon-hole creation,
Brokers see the Ding-an-
-sich as Real Estate?
When a politician
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he multiply her
Face into a crowd,
Are her fond responses
All-or-none reactions,
Does he try to buy her,
Is the kissing loud?
Strange are love's mutations:
Thus, the early poem
Of the flesh sub rosa
Has been known to grow
Now and then into the
Amor intellectu-
-alis of Spinoza;
How we do not know.
Slowly we are learning,
We at least know this much,
That we have to unlearn
Much that we are taught,
And are growing chary
Of empathic dogmas;
Love like Matter is much
Odder than we thought.
Love requires an Object,
But this varies so much,
Almost, I imagine,
Anything will do:
When I was a child, I
Loved a pumping-engine,
Thought it every bit as
Beautiful as you.
Love has no position,
Love's a way of living,
One kind of relation
Possible between
Any things or persons
Given one condition,
The one sine qua non
Being mutual need.
Through it we discover
An essential secret
Called by some Salvation
And by some Success;
Crying for the moon is
Naughtiness and envy,
We can only love what-
-ever we possess.
I believed for years that
Love was the conjunction
Of two oppositions;
That was all untrue;
Every young man fears that
He is not worth loving:
Bless you, darling, I have
Found myself in you.
When two lovers meet, then
There's an end of writing
Thought and Analytics:
Lovers, like the dead,
In their loves are equal;
Sophomores and peasants,
Poets and their critics
Are the same in bed.
Whenever you are thought, the mind
Amazes me with all the kind
Old such-and-such it says about you
As if I were the one that you
Attach unique importance to,
Not one who would but didn't get you.
Startling us both at certain hours,
The flesh that mind insists is ours,
Though I, for one, by now know better,
Gets ready for no-matter-what
As if it had forgotten that
What happens is another matter.
Few as they are, these facts are all
The richest moment can recall,
However it may choose to group them,
And, simple as they look, enough
To make the most ingenious love
Think twice of trying to escape them.
My second thoughts condemn
And wonder how I dare
To look you in the eye.
What right have I to swear
Even at one a.m.
To love you till I die?
Earth meets too many crimes
For fibs to interest her;
If I can give my word,
Forgiveness can recur
Any number of times
In Time. Which is absurd.
Tempus fugit. Quite.
So finish up your drink.
All flesh is grass. It is.
But who on earth can think
With heavy heart or light
Of what will come of this?
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplane circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one:
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
