Be Loved – and Be Love²
Love is not Consolation – it is Light³
Love seeketh not itself to please nor for
Itself hath any care – but for Another gives
Its Ease, and builds Heaven in Hell’s Despair⁴
Love knows not of Death nor Calculus Above⁵
Love is Anterior to Life – Posterior to Death –
Initial of Creation – and the Exponent of Earth⁶
Love is not love which Alters when it Alteration
Finds, or bends with the Remover to Remove:
O, no! it is an Ever-Fixed mark, that looks
On Tempests and is Never Shaken – that
Bears it out even to the Edge of Doom⁷
Love is Contraband in Hell because
Love is Acid – that Eats away Bars⁸
Love moves the Sun & Other Stars⁹
And in the end the Love you Take
Is equal to the Love you Make¹⁰
¹ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Reward of Service
² Bob Marley, Could You Be Loved
³ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
⁴ William Blake, The Clod & the Pebble
⁵ Sylvia Plath, Love is a Parallax
⁶ Emily Dickinson, Love – Is Anterior to Life
⁷ William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI
⁸ Assata Shakur, Love is Contraband in Hell
⁹ Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
¹⁰ Paul McCartney & John Lennon, The End