I tell my Love to Wreck it all: cut
Out all the ropes – and let me Fall²
Will they go on Aching still through
Centuries of Nerve – Enlightened to a
Larger Pain, in contrast with the Love³
Heaven is too much a Metaphor – to be
Useful to a lover Weeping for False Love⁴
Love seeketh only Self to Please – to Bind
Another to its Delight – Joy in another’s Loss
Of Ease – and builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite⁵
If I were out of Love & Sequence I’d turn Love’s
End, its Death, Knife-like against myself to Cut off
My Distinction and rejoin the Commons, Maimed⁶
If our Breath be as happily Fatal to ourselves
As to all others – let us join our lips in one
Kiss of Unutterable Hatred – and so Die⁷
Love, grown Faint and Fretful, with lips
But half Regretful, Sighs, and with eyes
Forgetful, Weeps that No Love endures⁸
When you Pluck my Heart out to find
What makes it move – you Halt the
Clock that Syncopates our Love⁹
Is Love Stronger than Unlove?
Only the Unloved know¹⁰
¹ Gwendolyn Brooks, The Life of Lincoln West
² Justin Vernon, Skinny Love
³ Emily Dickinson, I Measure Every Grief
⁴ Purvi Shah, Mira Pushes Aside the Mountain You Are Climbing
⁵ William Blake, The Clod & the Pebble
⁶ Alan Dugan, Conspiracy of Two Against the World
⁷ Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini’s Daughter
⁸ Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Garden of Proserpine
⁹ Sylvia Plath, Trio of Love Songs
¹⁰ Charles Wright, Littlefoot 19