Each lover has some theory of his own
Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone
Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;
The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,
The elderly, like Proust, are always prone
Whatever view we hold, it must be shown
For what as easy
Who goes with who
Fate is not late,
Sharp and silent in the
All mankind, I fancy,
Much as he would like to
Malinowski, Rivers,
Who when looking over
Would not like to know what
When a politician
Strange are love's mutations:
Slowly we are learning,
Love requires an Object,
Love has no position,
Through it we discover
I believed for years that
When two lovers meet, then
Whenever you are thought, the mind
Startling us both at certain hours,
Few as they are, these facts are all
Alone
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone:
That really stirs the senses, when awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.
He cannot join his image in the lake
So long as he assumes he is alone.
Are always up to mischief, though, and take
The universe for granted as their own.
To think of love as a subjective fake;
The more they love, the more they feel alone.
Why every lover has a wish to make
Some other kind of otherness his own:
Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone. To You Simply
For what though small,
For what is well
Because between,
To you simply
From me I mean
The bedclothes say
As I and you
Go kissed away,
The data given,
The senses even
Nor the speech rewritten,
Nor one word forgotten,
Said at the start
About heart,
By heart, for heart. Heavy Date
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.
When anticipating
Anything exciting
Like a rendezvous,
Occupy the time in
Purely random thinking,
For when love is waiting
Logic will not do.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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. Few and Simple
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.
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.
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.
