O all my labours scattered uselessly
O, all my useless scattered sighs,
O loyalty, that never, O living fire,
Chilled or burned others so, if I see truly,
O paper marked, to be marked, in vain,
In praise of those loved and ardent eyes,
O those hopes ministering to desires,
That their worthiest prize should claim,
All, all, in a moment, gathered by the breeze,
Since I have heard my impious lord
With my own ears, himself speak free,
Saying when near that he thinks of me,
And yet in leaving, in an instant leaves,
Of all my love, his every memory.
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From guest Glistri (contact)
Attachment with a desired end is not love. For either sex. It is a form of ravishment and bargaining. For women, the secret is not to give one's love easily, even when one knows it is true in one's own heart. The secret is to know that love is eternal, but lovers are not ("...and Death shall have no dominion..."). And at the first sign of a man's refusal to bow at the altar of real love (not obsession or lust), abandon him immediately to sit in the ashes of his own small ego. This is different from playing games. Men cannot give themselves over to love until they learn to stop splitting off their vulnerability. Until they stop the games of conquest. I always read Gaspara as operating in this mode: deeply motivated by her own ability to enchant, charm, and control. Then in a fury when she awoke to the consequences of that. I cannot say I ever read her work as emanating from a truly loving heart because she was so dependent on Collatino's actions and reactions. To love truly is to give up ego, outcome, and any of the conventional securities. You will know it is real love when you know in any moment that the object of your affection can be taken away...and you will say "thus it was always meant to be." I yearn for a poetry that celebrates the strongest, finest, and most centered in the human spirit, rather than the dependent, the obsessive, and the controlling.
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