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Cont(r)act
People in love constantly touch each other
one way or another. They huddle together
when they talk, some part of their bodies
clasped. Sitting apart at dinner or at a party
entertaining friends, suddenly their eyes meet
across the room, as if bringing together
two worlds riven apart by circumstance.
When they sleep, her warm and ample leg
is thrown over his skinny calf; when it's hot,
they need not nuzzle, but even in sleep, there's
an occasional, reassuring brush. Best of all
when they make love, leisurely or urgently
their two bodies throb as one. When its over,
they still touch, chatter about, laugh; or else,
the act itself is prolonged, remaining
just comfortably arousing, not orgasmic;
and often their love-making is not even
genital. But don't such lovers sometimes
need to withdraw into themselves? Don't
they require some privacy, some space
of their own? Actually, there are no
private places in love, no separate selves--
its not that everything is common or shared,
but only that there's no individuality
left, at least in the conventional sense,
no ego, no self obsessed with its own
fragmented happiness. The whole is holy,
so there's only love, no lovers at all. But
what happens when lovers such as these
quarrel or separate, destroying each other
in the process? What happens to their love?
When friendships break, when lovers part,
go their different ways, Love always remains
intact, immaculate: only, it withdraws itself
from their lives, alighting like a dove of peace
on another pair. But what of couples,
who like fine wine, age so well together,
assured and confident of each other's care,
they rarely need to demonstrate their affection,
have very little even to say to one another?
Even in their oneness, when they appear to be
two, they touch each other with their silences.
Together or apart, alive or dead,
those who love always stay in touch:
somewhere, somehow, their lifelines merge,
never to be plucked apart or split asunder.
