Love
A Question From One Who Loved Me (But Whom I Never Made Love To)
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Do I know that I am loved? Not really, no.
Partly because I never could believe
In love. I learned one does not earn it, though,
And once lost is a puzzle to retrieve.
Your question is emotional brinkmanship:
As an actor, world-class liar, stage-struck fraud,
I’d normally deflect it with a quip —
Quick wit was ever readier than my sword.
But as we may not meet again, I’ll say
What I have rarely said, though long have thought:
Love’s mostly blind-man’s buff and shadow-play,
While friendship is an art more finely wrought.
You’ll say, ‘Friends love you.’ Yes, and so they do,
But friendship is forged, my dear —
blade-straight, steel true.
This was an honest question, asked of me in emotionally charged circumstances. I suppose the answer revolves around one’s definition of what love is — a question beyond my powers to answer, But if ‘romantic love’ was a prime motive within the question, then I feel my response, for once, was completely truthful and accurate, from my own perspective. The post-World War II generation in the West (especially men) found it difficult to express their feelings in emotional matters. My father, after all, had been sent aloft after loading the wings of his aeroplane with death which he then rained down upon men, women and children. Can any generation, having taken part in such terrible events, teach their children that the outward expression of love (especially by a male) is not shameful or weak in some way? On balance, the answer has been in front of us for decades — and the verdict is ‘No, they could not’. The last four words of this poem are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s epitaph.
