Hesitation

Forlorn and forgotten, no glory, no fame

With past less than golden, with future as grim

In what mortal language can venture proclaim

This soul you enrapture, this heart you inflame?

Love is my cross,

And, reason, my chain . . .

Love, once lost, recaptured to lose again

Had silence implored to nurture the pain,

The fangs of frustration in furtive refrain.

Grant me words, Venus, a propos to pen

These thoughts warm and tender,

And longing profound . . .

For oft thither-hither did I move around

To change this sordid scheme of things unsound

Yet neither here nor there have I chance found

Soft comfort borne of less hostile ground.

Sweet agony, they say,

Makes reason strong . . .

Then all of one sudden like an Angels throng

To me unbeknownst, chance brought you along

Reason got confused, feared lest be wrong

Thenceforth got engrossed in Cupid's sweet song.

You're a force akin

To Kant's antinomies . . .

Like Xanthian surge is this urge to possess

You and not just your more than lovely face

E'n Goethe, or Heine, or Dante, or Horace

Would abandon poetry to savor with a kiss

The metaphysics in you lips,

The Religion in your eyes . . .

'Tis poignant irony, 'tis jest of the wise

That love unbespoken be reason's advice

A heart easily taken by Cupid's caprice

May soon bring the mind a tragic demise:

Bittersweet of many

A Shakespearean tragedy . . .

As that drinking Persian could not find the key

To the myriad questions both fools and wise men see

By Life's dialectics -- Freedom/Necessity

Love in unreason is fleeting fantasy.

Love entwined reason

True Beauty begets . . .

Life being boundless in its predicates

Chance needs not cherish what reason befits

Hence fear and frustration can challenge the wits

On the mortal question: Are you beyond reach?

Such question thus posed . . .

Much answer is lost!