For when they meet, the tensile air <br />Like fine steel strains under the weight <br />Of messages that both hearts bear- <br />Pure passion once, now purest hate; <br /> <br />Till the taut air like a cold hand <br />Clasped to cold hand and bone to bone <br />Seals them up in their icy land <br />(A few square feet) where into stone <br /> <br />The two hearts turning quickly pass <br />Once more their impenetrable world; <br />So fades out each heart's looking-glass <br />Whose image is the surface hurled <br /> <br />By all the air; air, glass is not; <br />So is their fleeting enmity <br />Like a hard mirror crashed by what <br />The quality of air must be. <br /> <br />For in the air all lovers meet <br />After they've hated out their love; <br />Love's but the echo of retreat <br />Caught by the sunbeam stretched above <br /> <br />Their frozen exile from the earth <br />And lost. Each is the other's crime. <br />This is their equity in birth- <br />Hate is its ignorant paradigm.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-paradigm/
