Love in poetry and song

It is not often that I am at a loss for words. But now, today, three years after Magucha died, there is a numbness, a weariness - I am finding it difficult to find the words to express the inexpressible. I mean three years, in the great scheme of things, is but a blink in time. Not to me though.

My belief: It cannot be that courage, friendship, intuition, empathy are all the result of chance or chemistry alone. This just doesn’t make any sense to me!

My belief: I cannot hold to the theory that love is just the result of hormonal juices, or synaptic chemical transfer.

That love – and I don’t just mean the “boy meets girl” initial attraction. I mean that love, that friendship, that companionship, that unquestioning acceptance of the “other”. This is rare and worth holding onto with everything at one’s disposal.

  

I like to believe that we had this – Magucha and I.

As always in times of high emotion I turn to the poets. Their understanding of the frailness of the human condition; their unique use of words have a restorative power that I find brings me peace. 

The 19^thCentury American poet, Henry Longfellow, I can relate to – he married twice. Each time his wife died – one in very tragic circumstances. But he was a great poet and apparently a very kind and gentle man.

Amongst many he wrote the poem, “A Shadow” – the last lines of which are:-

“Be comforted; the world is very old,

And generations pass, as they have passed,

A troop of shadows moving with the sun;

Thousands of times has the old tale been told;

The world belongs to those who come the last,

They will find hope and strength as we have done.”

So be it.