A Kind of Walking

For P & M-A

What is it in truth to love another? Surely this
Of all things has been expressed, described,
Repeated to exhaustion, is in its whole extent
The commonest of knowledge, understood almost
To the limits of infinity – does any other
Tendency or calling so engage what’s human?
Our surrounds, our very selves, are saturated
With all the urgent verbiage – sung, written, said –
Of its centrality to the rambling of the individual,
As if love were a place in nature, terrain
Ready for our step, the landfall of the personal.

But I don’t know. What then is underfoot?
It cannot be mere feeling, for this is shifting earth,
Mudslide, quicksand, a flow of lava one moment,
Dull grey rock the next, a territory of instability –
Although, and all this said, surely to be carried thus,
Swept head-first in up-ending dislocation –
Is to feel one’s self newly alive, open to every chance
And joy of being as in no other state. And yet,
And yet, is not this feeling – in and of the self –
Is it not at heart gratification of one’s own,
An exuberance rich with the thrill of narcissism?

If I have been shown, been granted, anything of love,
And have seen it in a few, there is another step
To take, beyond the self to an unyielding ground,
A distance from that of being in love, transporting
As this is, to that of being for another – a step
That is no celebration of self, but its dismantling –
The necessary motion a prompt of feeling, but
Fixed in decision, commitment, vow – through which
Our only firm-set earth is formed, and where,
In selfless presence, all else relinquished, there is
Not one nor two, nor body nor time nor death.

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