If equal affection cannot be, yadda yadda

April is National Poetry Month. In years past I would post a poem a day with involved thoughts about each poet. I must have been cracked.

I can’t even think about poetry right now, it’s too much of a potential landmine (soooo …. naturally, I am going to a poetry reading on Friday night at KGB Bar – honestly, Sheila, what are you DOING?) – but regardless. I’ve written about Auden’s “The More Loving One” before. Sometimes the poem has acted as a life raft (right after 9/11), sometimes it’s been more like … an ark … I stow away the stuff on it that I NEED when the bad times hit … so I will be able to retrieve them later. Other times it’s been too painful and enraging for me to even LOOK at the damn thing … although I have to say, that last line, man … the last line does tend to soften the blow. It’s that last line that is the gentlest, that allows for those of us who are wild in our grief, or in our melancholy or rage, for those who cannot see the stars anymore and are not ready to chirp cheerfully, “Everything happens for a reason!” or whatever other pat bullshit statement you want to make … it allows us to be where we ARE, no pressure to come out yet … and of course it is unthinkable that one day you will find the “total dark sublime” … but give it time. Give it time. I am in tears. There are times when I have read the poem and I think to myself “NONE of this is true to me right now … And screw EVERYONE who tries to make me see the bright side of the goddamn hell I am in – I’m not READY for that” … but the last line … The last line understands.

Favorite poem? Seems like an irrelevant question.

Talking about it ruins it anyway.

But I did want to post the poem, in honor of this month of poetry (something I do look forward to every year) and just leave it at that.

The More Loving One

by W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.