Love is blind Or maybe not. Maybe love is the lens through which we see people truly. My own opinion, as in most things, is, "It depends." I had to consider the question a bit more rigorously when writing Blues for the Muse, a novel. Was there room in the story for "it depends"?
Friday is scrapbook day around here so I pulled out a lovely sonnet by the late Hayden Carruth. It's simply called "Sonnet #10." You'll know in a minute why I found it pertinent.
You rose from our embrace and the small light spread
like an aureole around you. The long parabola
of neck and shoulder, flank and thigh I saw
permute itself through unfolding and unlimited
minuteness in the movement of your tall tread,
the spine-root swaying, the Picasso-like éclat
of scissoring slender legs. I knew some law
of Being was at work. At one time I had said
that love bestows such values, and so it does,
but the old man in his canto was right and wise:
ubi amor ibi ocullus est.
Always I wanted to give and in wanting was
the poet. A man now, aging, I know the best
of love is not to bestow, but to recognize.
--
The Latin phrase in line 11 means "Where love is, there is insight."
The painting is Chez le Père Lathuille (1879) by Édouard Manet, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tournai, Belgium.