He says, “I cannot find the words.”
She says, “Well, you just did;
and furthermore, it’s very clear
what’s been done and been hid.
There is no sense in acting like
you’d sooner up and die;
it is not poison, my dear boy.”
He says, “Crocodiles cry.”
She says, “You babble on of love,
citing eternity
while wasting moments and your breath.
What is the point? Tell me.”
He says, “Beyond the scope of time,
far past this mortal coil,
those near death moments still live on;
they will not rot or spoil.”
“And love…what else is worth such work?
Tho’ you’re hard to convince,
there is no grander cause for death,
nor much hard evidence
that anything we try will last
or stand when we are gone.
What else would you have us enjoin,
what bone to gnaw upon?”
She says, “Although you may be right,
which pains me much to say,
we travel at the speed of now
where yesterday, today
and what will be are much the same.
So your eternity
exists like its own Schrödinger,
to be or not to be.”
“So love, no matter what it is,
imagined or for real,
is all we have between us here
to know, to touch, to feel?”
He says, “It may be nothing,
but without it, we are lost.”
She says, “Convince me, if you can.”
He says, “But at what cost?”
“My love escapes beyond the gates
you place around your heart.”
She says, “You may yet find a key,
and with your words, your art,
melt this cold chill from off my bones.”
He says, “Oh, if I could;
just let my love’s bright embers spark
and catch upon your wood.”
She says, “I love you, well enough;
let this brave thing endure.”
He says, “For all the rest of time,
so sweet, so sad, so pure.”
She says, “You have convinced me;
take your property, my heart.”
He says, “You’re wrong, for that one’s mine;
you’ve had it from the start.”
Well, what of that? What do you think?
Who wins such a debate?
No wonder even gods lament
that nature leaves to fate
the future, when it is quite clear
that love has little chance
against the intellect who holds
themselves against romance.
12 DEC 2012