Heaven or Hell Equally Could Be

Music: Fugue in G minor.
By Dimitri Shostakovich. Sequenced by J. Marques.

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Nicholas Gordon

Heaven or hell equally could be
A marriage without end; the difference,
Perhaps, being sacrifice or self,
Plight or place, the fated or the free.
Yet loving well is not a mystery:
All of life is joy once one consents,
Nor can one rectify what one resents,
Nor love what one forsakes for fantasy.
If only one could tell oneself the truth,
Vested in a love consumed by years,
Each naked word would shimmer with desire,
Radiant with hunger long appeased.
So could one reap the ravages of youth,
Adrift upon a twilight shorn of fear,
Recumbent in the glow of early fire,
Yearning for the fate that one had seized.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.

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