Dimensions of Love

I thought to analyze this basic stuff
that is existence...taking love apart,
identifying every alias
that I could name. There was compassion and
humility; there was romance in all
its ages, and upon its fringes lurked
desire. But that must now be cast aside
as faithless, though there was compulsion deep
within, that may not be denied.

My vanity in such an exercise
was clear enough, although there was a man
named Paul who wrote a letter to his friends
in Corinth--could as well have stopped it just
as greatness loomed to crown his song about
a word, for with unconscious eloquence
he crowned himself with need of nothing more.

Old Paul knew how to say unlovely things
and seldom held his tongue,
but in this thirteenth chapter there emerged
the poet's saint, a mortal's dawning of
creation's mortar--quintessential truth.

In those post-lightning years he was no less
irascible, but bore within himself
an overflowing heart sustained by that
one ineluctable constraint that holds
us all together in a spirit sea.
~