The Cost of Love
If I had to I could have banged my head
on the mud-packed walls of my underground office
and maybe get a gash or two from the crystals
either on my oversized forehead or my cheekbones
for that is the cost of love I have been adding
up in the red, the one on the right, it’s tricky to
do a balance isn’t it? For values are
hard to measure and I didn’t read the book
of pain—I say enough of pain, and down with
666—I’ll take kindness, most of all
kindness, for love is the murdered thing.
—Gerald Stern
—found in Blessed as We Were: Late Selected and New Poems, 2000–2018 (2020)