A Failure of The Nerve (Nov. 2004)

... there seems to be another
impersonal thing in anima
which is individual, endogenous,
and independent of the racial
unconscious. She and her
companions brought Jung an
individual fate and perhaps
a style of feeling. I mean by this
his range of Einfuhlung across
cultures, his ability to distance by
relating impersonally through
ancient symbols, his fascination
with and understanding of
pathology

and, accompanying his wisdom,
the blindness by which he has been
accused in crucial relations,
evaluations, and judgments (Helene,
Sabina, Freud, national Socialism,
his choice of pupils).

- James Hillman, Anima: Anatomy
of a Personified Notion

It is my passion for you
-- this nail for all
you seem and sound --
which has made me love’s
sourer tide, alien and
cold compared to what
I sing in exalt spleen.

Love of your blue eyes
has helped me see the beds
of salt abysms and
made surficials pale,
my devotions to real
love untidy, indifferent.

So tired by day’s end
from these way-too-early
jaunts to you that I
I mutter over dinner
with my wife & doze
on the couch before
the night’s second
sitcom. Some lover.

The danger in these
solo arias hurled
at daily booming waves
is that they drain the
muster of my voice
in the aging house that
real love builds and
remits and shores.

Again and again
I’ve ended up with
women who find me
short and brittle
and so problemmatic
as to wound the
root-swales of their
love, abusing hope
with a distant gaze.

My love for you
is orchestral and
cathedral and no
damn good on shore
where all the humans
sun their fragile bones.

Each voyage here
hallows the soul’s
blue depth and
reach between
I and Thou
while at the same
time hollowing the
teeth I need sink in
every day to make
love gleam like
a wedding ring.

Perhaps I should have
never given up on
finding you out there
beyond this shore
of paper washed
by incessant
moony ink.

I should have been
been love’s greater fool;
had bigger balls to
risk the living raw
of clench and parry;
taken my licks;
stood stout and
resolute and fierce;
have fought for the
eternal love-bite
of the human bruise.

Had I been a more
mortal man, perhaps
I wouldn’t have gotten
so entranced with
those immortal
sands stretching
everywhere around
that fateful door
she once walked
out and which I
quailed to follow.

Now all I have is
paper absolution
and the scorn of brides:
words as fulsome as
your absent tide and
not much to offer
when I shut this
book and head upstairs
to join my wife in bed.

Abundant music I have
found beyond the
horizon of all dreams
with ears the real life
with great justification
curses and bounds.