What We Talk About, When We Talk About Love

I thought this was so perfect. Just perfect.


Not To Trouble You

by Leonard Nathan

Not to trouble you with love, I mean
those adolescent dreams of great, of greater,
or of greatest loving, let alone
the crumbly personal kind—compared with, say,
the public good or harder thoughts of death
obliterating thoughts of love, or after-
thoughts of love outgrown or love undone;
and not to be ironic either, not
to forget we come into the world alone
and leave it so; and not to be claiming more
than you can give, uncertain as I am
what I require: something like love, I guess,
whatever it is we've done without so long,
so faithfully and with such tenderness.

And these, compliments Graham Greene to Vivienne Dayrell-Browning, as he courted her in over 1,200 letters, poems and conversions to Catholicism:

"Darling, it's wonderful when the person one loves most in the world encourages one in what one loves next best (even though far less). … I've never met so complete a companion as you. Those winter evenings you describe seem to me the only thing worth having. It's companionship with you that I want & just that sort of companionship …

"And the whole thing would be an adventure finer than ordinary marriage, because it would be two, not merely fighting for each other, but for a shared idea. Darling, it sounds fantastic, but the fantastic is often wildly practical, as when Columbus put out from Spain. And I remember you wrote once that you did love me, though it wasn't in a way I understood, but, darling, it's a way I do understand, & it's the final because there's no reason why it should ever end, which is very different to the other. I wish to God (& I mean that literally) that this dream could come true."

Oh god it's wonderful/ to get out of bed/ and drink too much coffee/ and smoke too many cigarettes/ and love you so much/