Tuesday, January 12, 2010

They asked me how I knew

[In Memoriam Eric Rohmer]

The quest for love,
like the quest for truth,

is a moral quest. Meaning
it is confused, and arbitrary, and never

complete. This is not to say
that love is truth. Only

that both are circumstantial,
that both demand

a certainty that neither
can attain.

A true love is a love
too good to be true.

So say that love is not true,
is never true, is always make-believe.

In the making of that belief lies
the essential wager,

the theorem of a possibility:
we tell ourselves we are in love

and it is the telling
that makes it a lie.

The quest for a beloved truth, then,
for the perfect

goodbye.

9 comments:

Anjali said...

Loved it! :)

km said...

RIP.

//this poem, particularly the closing line, makes me want to watch "Claire's Knee" again.

Falstaff said...

Anjali: Thanks

km: Thanks. That's quite a compliment.

Anonymous said...

Nice. But how do you decide punctuation in these things?

n!

Ana said...

the beginning reminded me of Ma Nuit chez Maud -his quest for Francine, and it is suggested in the end (of the movie) that they had a real "love marriage", or so they were telling themselves :)

(I did not knew he passed so recently...(: )

Anonymous said...

I inclination not acquiesce in on it. I assume precise post. Especially the appellation attracted me to read the whole story.

Anonymous said...

more than anything else it reminds us of our own lil crazy life..how well all unique creatures f this world have sumwhat common story..

a

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rakhi said...

Beautiful..