This that we call love

[TheEarthIsRound]

This love hath always been selfish,
It hath never been equality
That says shall love us all.
It is a conquest, an acquisition.
This, that we call love,
Splits God’s love’s divine.
We want to play God’s role
To see Her supplicate
Fully,
To see Her surrender.
Of love within desire,
Thus this moment stays forever,
And your possession
Be Her.
Love is but a dreamy,
Shaping fantasy.
To drive your chariot
Across Her two mountains,
To conquest the Fortress.
To spell your magic
So that He
Is under your Trap,
He the Warrior held captive.
You be the control,
You be the magic.
Selfishly we play God
In love and lover’s name.
However amazing this love be.





This love that I believe is for “Her”,
Is truly for myself.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I was put off at first by the archaic "hath" but got swept along in the sincere solemnity of this. The assertion in the last line, however, can only be the author's opinion and doesn't necessarily follow from everything that came before it.

[billl]

There is a good critique of a controlling-type personality here. It doesn't sound like a love experience that really involved any sort of soulful or emotional connection. It's understandable that one would be repelled.

I agree that it is wrong to use another person as a tool or trophy. But I don't think it is fair to seemingly include a more giving love between individuals in this condemnation, though.


This, that we call love,
Splits God’s love’s divine.
We want to play God’s role

I think this is a wonderful wording (in a well-crafted poem--such efficiency!), but I suspect it might be an argument against a type of love that isn't always so unhealthy as in the example in the poem.

I mean, when I read the title, I was tempted to include myself in "we," and considered it to perhaps be in reference to the sort of love that non-religious poetry usually addresses (the love between individuals)--to perhaps suggest that such love is an illusion. It seems to me the greater illusion is to imagine that an automatic love for new acquaintances would be more divine than the love for one with whom we have connected more deeply, over time, in privately-shared experiences.

The "agape" type of love (everyone loves everyone) works out neatly, as a concept, because it is a pretty simple design. And it lines up with the general principle that we should treat others generously, all else being equal--which I think is right. But that's all I can see that it has going for it. It isn't so great to imagine it taking precedence over all else, in my opinion. It seems sort of homogenizing to tilt our ideas about love in such a direction.

[blank|verse]

I'm in agreement with Prince about using words like 'hath' instead of 'has' in the year 2010. Unless it's a pastiche or parody, which I have to wonder if this is - or are you expecting us to read the following with a straight face?


To drive your chariot
Across Her two mountains,
To conquest the Fortress.

[TheEarthIsRound]

Thanks for the comments!

PrinceMyshkin & blank|verse: Now when I re-read the poem, I find it to be, indeed, kind of pretentious and unrealistic about the word "hath". And it has gotten me to think about the obsession with words I have sometimes. I will improve the wordings, so that I hope in future my sincerity will not be blinded by the love I have for some words.


billl: Yes I agree that love is an individual and psychological perception. This gift of humanity probably will never be figured out with any specific definition =)

[MorpheusSandman]

Since others have commented on the themes, I will say that I don't think anachronisms in poetry are always a bad thing, it just depend on what you're trying to achieve with the piece and what they bring to it. Anachronisms tend to bring a feeling of remoteness to the piece; of something rather distant. I could say classic but they don't automatically make a piece classic as much as it can make it feel like a classic. But I don't get that this is a poem that's made to feel like that. There's too much immediacy and an almost modern nihilism to the words. That said, it is rather interesting that it begins with the anachronisms which are mostly gone by the end. It was probably unconscious but it gives the piece a feeling of contrast; between some kind of classic, divine love moving into the realm of modern selfishness; although, as blank verse pointed out, there is a very old-ish metaphor near the end (the chariot one) so the contrast doesn't work as well as it might.

These are just things to think about for the future.

[TheEarthIsRound]

Thanks Morpheus! It has been very helpful!