Hotel New Hampshire

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Love's Strategems

Donald Justice (1925 - )

But these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
(As honor, for time being, commands)
Will hardly prevent their downfall.

Stronger medicines are needed.
Already they find
None of their strategems have succeeded,
Nor would have, no,
Not had their eyes been stricken blind,
Hands cut off at the elbow.

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I remember reading this in John Irving's "Hotel New Hampshire" a few years back (disturbing story, but a good read nonetheless.) To me, this is not simply a love poem. I tend to think that it refers to all that is inextricably tied to your core self--your true passions: what you adore, what you abhor, the things you really believe that make life worth a damn--and how it's impossible to ignore or deny them. Your inner desires are always there, whether you act on them or not. You can choose to merely think upon them and constantly feel unfulfilled, or, to further beat a cliche to death, "to thine own self be true."

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POST SCRIPT: Just read all that & seems a bit like a load of rot in retrospect. Bwah ha ha. Oh well, I still think worlds of the poem.