The Rhetoric of Love

THE RHETORIC OF LOVE

The rhetoric of love is exorbitant, exuberant, exhausting

Hyperbolic, hyperventilating, hyperactive.

It trips off the tongue like trills, thrills, until
Its subject is unhinged, unglued, unsettled.

Challenging the senses, the sensibilities, the syntax
Love exclaims, declaims, and claims

That nothing compares, dares, shares
Hopes, helps, or hurts
Like love.

It says silly things like
‘it’s better to have loved and lost than…’
As if love is the answer, the goal, the ultimate.
Not the question, the means, the meaning.

Yet not all loves are the same, or sane, or redemptive,
Not all obsessions are magnificent, magnanimous, magical.
Not all loves are greater, higher, purer, deeper.

Did not the friar say ‘love moderately, long love doth so’
Likening some love to gunpowder that when kissed is consumed and all consuming?
In fear of the big bang, some opt for sparklers instead, that simmer and fizzle out.

Love lingers long on the palette, in the heart, on the mind.
Even when it only grazes through long gazes it proves more than a flesh wound.
For the two were meant to be one for creation,
Not merely fun for recreation.

Real love is self-giving, not self-indulgent,
Self-sacrificial, not self-centered
Selfless, not selfish
It longs for alliance not dalliance
Permanence not fleeting pleasure.

Love is not a god
But God is love
And we are made like him
Not merely to like him
But to love him wholeheartedly, single-mindedly,
Without hesitation, without regret, without doubt.

Only God is eternal
Only divine love everlasting
And without everlasting life
We cannot share everlasting love.

And so it is that everlasting life, love, truth and beauty
Long to belong together forever.
Then the rhetoric of love becomes reality,
Faith becomes sight,
Hope is realized,
And we become what we admire, and who we were meant to be—
Lovers.

July 30th 2012.
BW3