Love Song
Here is the place, and now the time,
To reach for shapes
that melt and move,
And fix within the frame of rhyme
The ever-changing
face of love.
The nun in black, the bride in white,
Schoolgirl and
mystic, mother, child,
Know the same pain, the same delight,
Alike
ennobled and beguiled.
Rapture divine and selfish bliss,
The taking, and the
giving free,
The holy and the lustful kiss
Are one perturbing entity.
Then is it soul, or is it sex,
God's image, or an
appetite?
A power to hallow, or to vex,
Or something that does neither,
quite?
One word should be inadequate
For all the loves we need
to show,
But say it, and it bears the weight;
Say it--and those you
love will know.
Mary Womack Cox
October 1963
[Director of Communications, Episcopal Diocese of Southeast
Florida]