A Question Unanswered

A QUESTION UNANSWERED

And now it is to be expected that the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’, eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself...

Civilisation and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud

“When has love stemmed the tide of blood

or driven back the tears?” you ask,

but I cannot answer.

Who knows what cruel depths we’ll sink to

in the reaches of desire,

what green fields we’ll lie in

when the dreamtime comes?

And maybe love is no more than

a search for things we sense

but cannot touch—forgotten scars

we see in other eyes

or trace in other flesh,

without feeling.

One thing only do I know,

that the man in the animal is

our death,

yours and mine, my friend.

And though we take this lightly,

and though we scoff at dreams

and laugh away the nightmares

and premonitions,

another’s dream may someday prove

your nightmare—

last night I saw you with

a parcel you’d been sent

and felt your anguish when you touched,

with trembling heart,

your daughter’s severed hands.

These things happen.

Pavlos Andronikos

Published in Australian Writing Now ed. M. Jurgensen & R. Adamson (Outrider & Penguin, 1988), p. 284.