Love’s Legacy Mark A. Murphy

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books. –

Gustave Flaubert

My first love destroyed yours, though you too loved as if your life depended on finishing the book.

Only a madman would’ve tried prize you from it, and, of course, we tried like a ruined child to destroy

everything you identified with, in a rage so ferocious, we rent the curtain of the temple in two halves.

And yet, we have no idea who, or by what margin –we who have so many ideas – are most in love with:

Emma, Eleanor, or Helen? Femmes who only need take breath to set the minds of both radicals

and artisans racing with obscenities. So soon, we lose sight of our own struggles, as we run headlong

into danger without care or forethought of action. Prepubescent boys might fare better

than grown men – who open like over-ripe conkers at the siren call of sexual perfection.

But life can disfigure a man’s motivation, his purpose and his joy, more surely than a blow to the head

with a great tome, rendering him improbable to drink with, or be with, outside the humdrum of provincial life.

Now intemperate with jealousy, the stars fade in a fog of regret, as real as it is easy to betray all our convictions.