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Love and Desire
Posted: 04 April 2016
Word Count: 81
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Love and Desire
Love doesn’t make
the world go round
desire does
Women marry for love
not desire
because they
understand the difference
Men marry for desire
thinking it’s love
because they
don’t
Desire is power
and power takes
rules and destroys
Love is meaning
and meaning gives
shares and creates
Desire is the wind
that fills our sails
with Nature’s power that
Love obeys to tack
the boat upwind
If we would command Nature
First we must obey Her.
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Comments by other Members
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 James Graham at 19:50 on 09 April 2016
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The main strength of this poem is in its structure. To an extent it’s structured by its argument, but the verse form reinforces this: each line a step towards the conclusion, and each stanza break a major step. If you had written this in prose, the point would be made but much less forcefully. In verse, it’s very satisfying to read.
The two-line conclusion is wholly convincing and quite profound. Though we are able to ‘command’ Nature – use Nature to pursue our aspirations – we are also part of Nature, not something alien to it. We must go with it, not against it. This has implications beyond the poem’s theme of love and desire. Nature in the environmental sense, as well as the human, comes into it too. If we destroy too many trees, we damage the atmosphere; we are not obeying Nature. If we can’t leave the trees alone, we must replace them.
The lines just before the conclusion contain a very telling image. Tacking against the wind is a human skill, developed no doubt at some time in prehistory soon after the sail itself was invented. (The invention of the wheel is so often talked about, but surely the sail is equally important.) Tacking is a very well chosen example of what you say in the conclusion: the sailing-boat functions in obedience to the forces of Nature, then humans add a refinement which goes one better than Nature. But obedience comes first.
Most of the poem is without figurative language (which is largely not needed; the poetry is in the form). There are many well-chosen words, especially in
Desire is power
and power takes
rules and destroys
Love is meaning
and meaning gives
shares and creates
Takes/ gives, rules/ shares, destroys/ creates. A very satisfying symmetry. But the sailing-boat stanza enhances the poem by using a telling metaphor to strengthen the plainer reasoning that precedes it.
I’m not sure I agree that men don’t understand the difference between desire and love! Reading those lines I had to mentally qualify it: men tend not to understand. But some do. I don’t think it matters; any intelligent reader can insert that qualification and still see that there’s truth in your statement. I certainly agree without the least qualification that desire without love goes against Nature.
This is surely one of your best poems – for all the reasons stated above.
James.
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.JPG) Zettel at 01:57 on 11 April 2016
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Thanks James
I appreciate your perspective; which is as ever very encouraging.
Best
Z
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 V`yonne at 15:14 on 12 April 2016
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What I liked most is the logical conclusion that in order to maintain a balance we must honour power and creativity -- the female and male, the yin and yang. The entire poem has balance. Its form and content balance, its bats to and fro, it ticks. Form and content... I love that in a poem.
Should it come within my grasp, I would grasp it.
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