Meaningful Love
John Ashbery
What the bad news was
became apparent too late
for us to do anything good about it.
I was offered no urgent dreaming,
didn't need a name or anything.
Everything was taken care of.
In the medium-size city of my awareness
voles are building colossi.
The blue room is over there.
He put out no feelers.
The day was all as one to him.
Some days he never leaves his room
and those are the best days,
by far.
There were morose gardens farther down the slope,
anthills that looked like they belonged there.
The sausages were undercooked,
the wine too cold, the bread molten.
Who said to bring sweaters?
The climate's not that dependable.
The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,
where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.
I got rid of the book of fairy tales,
pawned my old car, bought a ticket to the funhouse,
found myself back here at six o'clock,
pondering "possible side effects."
There was no harm in loving then,
no certain good either. But love was loving servants
or bosses. No straight road issuing from it.
Leaves around the door are penciled losses.
Twenty years to fix it.
Asters bloom one way or another.
Love is a incongruous and curious state of being. Who really knows what meaningful love is? Each person has their own template, I suppose. As humans we yearn for it, find it, lose it, find it again, suffer for it, bludgeon ourselves and others over the head with it, nurse our broken hearts, try again, fail, fail, fail, and hate those who have found it. Hate them with a fierce Chuck Norris intensity.
But, what is meaningful love? We think we know what it is. Fairy-tale romance, obsessive love, mother love, religious fervor, self-sacrificing, unconditional, negating, all consuming passion. We read novels, tell ourselves and our kids fairytale stories and pretend they aren't part of our psychic DNA. We watch films that show us what love should be:, sweeping and all encompassing, with a ubiquitous violin score ratcheting up in the background.
Be honest, don't you put your love life on scale and weigh it against some novel, legend, fairytale, or film, or some couple that has "found it"? Of course, we all do, and of course, this ultimately leaves us feeling cheated because our significant other forgot our anniversary, or left the freaking toilet seat up, yet again!
Perhaps, love is like what Ekhart Tolle said in the first few pages of his latest book, something about Jesus commanding us to be as a flower. The natural world blooms and recreates itself regardless of the losses or harm it suffers. A flower blooms and that's enough. I think we'd all be much happier as flowers.
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