HOW CAN THE HEART LIVE? Poem by James Fenton

How can the heart live that loved once so well?
The body that knew love without deceit?
For I remember now I was not mad
Loving my bright unblemished luck
And finding a simple joy in what I had.

And I remember now I was not deceived.
The tongue lies. Really, the body does not lie.
And long before the breaking of the wave
I knew there was some great good I had mislaid
And logic tells me what I lost was love.

Affection with an electric charge of hope
Is what love was. Affection died in the flames.
There's no insurance: earthquake, fire and flood,
War, famine, pestilence - all such are deemed
The visitations of some love-crossed god.

On some remote Olympus of the soul,
Hidden beyond the brain's cloud-forest line,
Some ancient grudge-match is being fought to the last.
It seems that we were proxies in the fight
And there's no compensation, no redress.

Live without hope for a time, unlucky heart.
Unlucky lover in this ruined city,
Live with this loss, these lucky ruined lives.