The Paradigm

For when they meet, the tensile air

Like fine steel strains under the weight

Of messages that both hearts bear-

Pure passion once, now purest hate;

Till the taut air like a cold hand

Clasped to cold hand and bone to bone

Seals them up in their icy land

(A few square feet) where into stone

The two hearts turning quickly pass

Once more their impenetrable world;

So fades out each heart's looking-glass

Whose image is the surface hurled

By all the air; air, glass is not;

So is their fleeting enmity

Like a hard mirror crashed by what

The quality of air must be.

For in the air all lovers meet

After they've hated out their love;

Love's but the echo of retreat

Caught by the sunbeam stretched above

Their frozen exile from the earth

And lost. Each is the other's crime.

This is their equity in birth-

Hate is its ignorant paradigm.