The Struggle
29.06.07 - 11:43 p.m.
Yet I feel I have ranted enough.
My poems have been poison, when I took the role of foe.
The truth is that, if I dare claim I love you as one true,
I must truly learn to love you in a way that lets you go.

My dear, I forgive you and all you have done.
I am well sick of shadows, sick to my guts of blame,
And of tallying your wrongs, like a miser with his gold.
I am sick of feeling angry at the mere sound of your name.

Now that all is over, I can finally love
As I could never love you unless our love was ended.
Now I can be gracious where you never once showed grace;
I can try to be the friend whom you never befriended.

Easy enough to love when love finds its recompense,
Its answer gentle words, and its comfort doled out thickly.
The challenge is to love someone who loves all but the lover,
The greater love remembers him who forgot love so quickly.

It was easy to blame you for the blow dealt to my pride,
And the nightmares which came each night to torment me for so long.
Like a cold figure of darkness so you grew up in my heart,
And the brambles of love's hatred looked to choke off love's true song.

But what is more easy to do is so often the baser,
And the difficult to do, oft the wiser thing likewise;
So it's easy to demand restitution for your debt,
And so difficult to write off the sum total of your lies.

Yet I feel it is the truth that I will love you all my life,
And so that this may be a lighter, cleaner load to bear,
I will throw away the hate which has so weighed it down like lead,
And - blest if, now, it has not come to feel as light as air.

No longer that deep love which women save for marriage-bond,
But love as would exist between a friend, and former friend,
Which will not turn its back although the other's back be turned,
Where infidelity is but a testing, not an end.

No longer fretting that the sacrifice be overlooked,
But content never to be known, to lie serene and low -
Ah! God grant me that I may love in this way till the end,
God grant me strength to love and not resent the letting go.