“The love bones knock against the hate bones and fingers click in time…”

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In my previous post, I wrote:

 

“Against all the modern nonsense, what would never work for him would work for her.

 

She’d be better off saying if she can’t have him, then she’s not interested in anyone.

 

That she says, on infrequent random occasions, that she misses him.

 

Thinks of him at certain times.

 

Recalling fondly certain memories.

 

Now, this never works for men because it shows he does not put himself first.”

 

I could go into more detail regarding the final line of the above quotation.

 

But a better move would be to simply let poetess Fleur Adcock [who was born in 1934 and is twice divorced, I feel it prudent to mention] explain it for me.

 

 

 

Advice to a Discarded Lover
–Fleur Adcock

Think, now: if you have found a dead bird,
not only dead, not only fallen,
but full of maggots: what do you feel –
more pity or more revulsion?

Pity is for the moment of death,
and the moments after. It changes
when decay comes, with the creeping stench
and the wriggling, munching scavengers.

Returning later, though, you will see
a shape of clean bone, a few feathers,
an inoffensive symbol of what
once lived. Nothing to make you shudder.

It is clear then. But perhaps you find
the analogy I have chosen
for our dead affair rather gruesome –
too unpleasant a comparison.

It is not accidental. In you
I see maggots close to the surface.
You are eaten up by self-pity,
crawling with unlovable pathos.

If I were to touch you I should feel
against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin.
Do not ask me for charity now:
go away until your bones are clean

 

 

 

Read that poem again.

 

And again.

 

Let it Truly and deeply sink into your being.

 

Because this is how all women perceive such.

 

Only the degree differs [even then, not by much].

 

Hold onto it, not as a stone of bitterness to drag you downward.

 

Rather, as a shield.

 

Both defending you—

 

And concealing certain facets of your all too human weaknesses.

 

 

 

 

 

Ω