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
Taken 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 respones,
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 were taught,
And are growing chary
Of emphatic 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 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.
