Losing What You Love To Hate Poem by gershon hepner

LOSING WHAT YOU LOVE TO HATE


When an object that we love to hate
is lost that love is syncronously lost;
because when hate we've loved to incubate
begins to melt, just as the permafrost
is doing now that climate changes, we
find we have no means left to validate
the love we only learn belatedly
depends on hate we chose to extirpate.

Rosecrans Baldwin ("The American in Paris, " NYT,5/7/12) writes about the replacement of Nicolas Sarkozy by the Socialist François Hollande.

In fact, Mr. Sarkozy was never particularly "French" as we know it. He wasn't a gourmand, academic or wonk. He loved America, unabashedly, and Elvis, and wasn't ashamed to say so. And we, to the extent that we could ever love a French president, took to him. Americans don't mind millionaires running our business. Mr. Sarkozy, president of the rich, was always more our man than theirs. For five years, we had a man in Europe we could have elected ourselves.
Now he's gone. The vote wasn't for Mr. Hollande, but against his opposite — a rebuff of Mr. Sarkozy's policies, but also his singularity, his vanity and naughtiness. France and America have a long history of mutual loathing and longing. Americans still dream of Paris; Parisians still dream of the America they find in the movies of David Lynch. It will take time for both countries to adjust to a new leader, a new image. For our part, we may even learn what a real Socialist is. But the French will have it worse. They may not miss Nicolas Sarkozy now; they may never pine for him to return. They will, however, feel his absence. The temperature will drop. When an object we love to hate is removed, then love is lost, too.

5/7/12 #10,106