This is a word we use to plug <br />holes with. It's the right size for those warm <br />blanks in speech, for those red heart- <br />shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing <br />like real hearts. Add lace <br />and you can sell <br />it. We insert it also in the one empty <br />space on the printed form <br />that comes with no instructions. There are whole <br />magazines with not much in them <br />but the word love, you can <br />rub it all over your body and you <br />can cook with it too. How do we know <br />it isn't what goes on at the cool <br />debaucheries of slugs under damp <br />pieces of cardboard? As for the weed- <br />seedlings nosing their tough snouts up <br />among the lettuces, they shout it. <br />Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising <br />their glittering knives in salute. <br /> <br />Then there's the two <br />of us. This word <br />is far too short for us, it has only <br />four letters, too sparse <br />to fill those deep bare <br />vacuums between the stars <br />that press on us with their deafness. <br />It's not love we don't wish <br />to fall into, but that fear. <br />this word is not enough but it will <br />have to do. It's a single <br />vowel in this metallic <br />silence, a mouth that says <br />O again and again in wonder <br />and pain, a breath, a finger <br />grip on a cliffside. You can <br />hold on or let go.<br /><br />Margaret Atwood<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/variations-on-the-word-love/
