I Found Out The Uses of Love
I found out the uses of love
But they helped me to find
Only a buried hope in a buried mind.
Love reveals, thus it will not protect,
Love reveals, thus it wins no respect,
Love reveals, reveals, reveals,
And feels nothing after it feels.
Every arrow we send in the air
Hits hope, if hope is still there.
Love gives us the world, but when?
Given, it must be given, again.
Hurry, oh hurry! But be slow!
Stay! Stay! But then, will you go?
Love, what are you? If not trust?
We do not choose to love. We must.
But they helped me to find
Only a buried hope in a buried mind.
Love reveals, thus it will not protect,
Love reveals, thus it wins no respect,
Love reveals, reveals, reveals,
And feels nothing after it feels.
Every arrow we send in the air
Hits hope, if hope is still there.
Love gives us the world, but when?
Given, it must be given, again.
Hurry, oh hurry! But be slow!
Stay! Stay! But then, will you go?
Love, what are you? If not trust?
We do not choose to love. We must.
duncangmaclaurin said,
February 6, 2013 at 11:59 pm
I like the final line, and indeed the whole. I would suggest though that you cut out the first line. Then have as the first line: “Love helped me to find”. Then you’d have a more regular sonnet (of 14 lines). I think the new first line would serve better as a title too.
thomasbrady said,
February 7, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Hi Duncan,
I wasn’t thinking sonnet at all when I wrote this, but perhaps unconsiously my ear was.
Put lines 1 and 2 together: you get 5 beats. Line 3 has 5 beats. So it does open with ‘two lines’ of iambic pentameter—but then it devolves to trimeter.
A standard iambic pentameter, 14 line sonnet has 70 beats. My poem has 50, so it’s too small to be a sonnet, yet a 14 line poem with 4 beats per line (instead of 5 beats) has 56.
Your suggestion reduces the total number of beats to 47.
Your idea is perhaps better, but to me, I don’t know if I want line 3 to come up so fast, but that’s maybe because I wrote the poem and that’s how it’s established in my mind.
Tom