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I wouldn't quite say unequivocally that those are lies, or at least that true love is a lie. The poem True Love by Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska replie
by dominik 18y ago
I wouldn't quite say unequivocally that those are lies, or at least that true love is a lie.
The poem True Love by Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska replies better than I can:
True love. Is it normal /
is it serious, is it practical? /
What does the world get from two people /
who exist in a world of their own?
Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, /
drawn randomly from millions but convinced /
it had to happen this way - in reward for what? /
For nothing. /
The light descends from nowhere. /
Why on these two and not on others? /
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. /
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles, /
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.
Look at the happy couple. /
Couldn't they at least try to hide it, /
fake a little depression for their friends' sake? /
Listen to them laughing - its an insult. /
The language they use - deceptively clear. /
And their little celebrations, rituals, /
the elaborate mutual routines - /
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!
It's hard even to guess how far things might go /
if people start to follow their example. /
What could religion and poetry count on? /
What would be remembered? What renounced? /
Who'd want to stay within bounds?
True love. Is it really necessary? /
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, /
like a scandal in Life's highest circles. /
Perfectly good children are born without its help. /
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years, /
it comes along so rarely.
Let the people who never find true love /
keep saying that there's no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Edit: I can't figure out how to get CRLFs in the right places, so here's the link for the properly formatted version: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/694.html http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/694.html