Monday, April 28, 2008

True Love

     Lewis wrote this for his wife...it is simply brilliant and touching....and honest...which is wonderful.

As the Ruin Falls
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

________________


this reminded me of a quote from the play Shadowlands, that is about Lewis' life.

Jack(lewis) says: "Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal"

Another quote from the play that the poem reminded me of is this,

Jack: "Will you marry this foolish, frightened old man... who needs you more than he can bear to say... who loves you, even though he hardly knows how"


_____

 th.e.nd
  _____

No comments: