The question for the object of his affections I suppose was, pro tanto quid retribuamus? This was not a love poem (no wedding rings on the table) – it was a lust poem. And that got me thinking about love/lust poetry in general. There were all the flowery ones, needless to say, and I’d used my fair share of Keats & Co. to advantage over the years but, increasingly, succinct was the way ahead for me. (It’s what’s left unsaid that breaks the heart.) Love, like happiness, it seems, is in sharpest focus when half-glimpsed – in margins and interstices – lending itself to the subordinate clause, the short lyric, the apercu. On me your voice falls as they say love should, / Like an enormous yes. Hard to beat that one (verging on zen archery). Who else? Shakespeare’s sonnets? Rilke? Whitman? Gravesie, of course, lord of the love lyric: Love is universal migraine, / A bright stain on the vision / Blotting out reason. And the other symptoms? Leanness, jealousy, laggard dawns, omens and nightmares.
