The Troubles of Love

12 December 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/12/the-troubles-of-love/

I just don't know. Can any secret love
satisfy? Why love in secret? Blake may say
it must be so, but I don't know...I'd open
my heart, one page at a time. That way
one has time to absorb it, in all its complexities.
Be not a secret forever. The secret must turn
into vow, spoken plainly, for all the world to see.

But what kind of vow can there be, for ones
like you and me, who sway with the inconstant moon?
I can offer my life, but what a paltry gift,
such a variable thing! Yet I have nothing else.
I would find one who understands, but are we then both
doubly lost? Is that the cost? Must we double our troubles
in order to find our true joy?

This explains the appeal of the secret. A spoken love
must bring trouble. A secret love can be hidden, ignored
when convenient, despised even...still it survives as a cherished secret.
But no, it can never satisfy. Only the love that brings trouble
can satisfy, because it is true, not illusion
or fantasy...and yet even so all the troubles of love
are no trifling matter. I just don't know.

But still I must know, I must find out,
I must take this chance. There is too much to lose
and to gain. What are troubles compared
to the ache in my heart? This ache, which I found
without seeking, and resisted each step of the way,
but which grows ever stronger all the same,
has become my greatest trouble, far greater,
if left unfulfilled, than even the worst troubles of love.

I would have her and can't explain why.
We have looked twice into the same sky.
If an answer should come from above, let it burn
until nothing remains here but love.