What  is this selection of love so natural

To drive men insane and women to purgatory

Can Mr Darwin explain?

I doubt not , but is the meaning clear

Why love one to one remains so dear.

Karl denied it, Lenin too

And Uncle Joe dismissed it

As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.

But in that recent time when ******’s darkness shadowed
                                                                                                 The Earth

Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’  Terezins

Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams

Of why we love one to one.


Keats loved one ***** Brawne

And Coleridge his Asra

But what is ecstasy’s advantage?

When comes the pain of separation

Mr Darwin, please explain.

Is it lust, is it reproduction?

But then when love is thwarted

We cannot function,

Where is the advantage

Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?

How the coiled spiral passing from time to time

Its immortal message which condemns each generation

To the pain of separation

When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders

The coils of love’s message  we’ve inherited

Since the beginning of time.

Why? What is the advantage?

Mr D, please tell me your answer.


The whales they sing one to one

Like Eliot’s mermaids singing

Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me

The message of communication.

Is this love as one to one

Each supports another wounded

By the enormity of the harpoon?

The dictator’s message in another form

Devoid of love, sundered, never whole

Coming from that Terezin we never solve.

Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage

For such conflicting feelings to evolve?



David Applin (Copyright 2015)

March 2012