Lovehate

LOVEHATE


by Alan Britt
Reistertown, Md.

What’s often construed
as hate
is really love.
But love is inconsolable
in its many guises.
Walt Whitman talked
about the innocent side
of manly love
during his luxurious strolls
along the filthy docks
of Manhattan.
Other love poems
have been excavated by Marvell, Keats,
Lorca, and Aleixandre.
The visceral brain
is our universe
which sometimes
hides behind intellect,
for no other reason
than to be charmingly obtuse.
How fortunate, though,
that we attend Manet’s picnic
at our leisure,
or taste the blue almonds
falling from one of Georg Trakl’s poems.
Now if only
we could arrange the pieces
of our emotional universe
into a mosaic
to include
the burning footprints of the Tyger
prowling
the dark forests
of our insomnia.

Alan Britt

Posted over on Language and Culture