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Mathematics of Love

 

The links are chance, the chain is fate,

Constricting as Hephaistos’ net

Which to the smiles of gods betrayed

Two bodies on a single bed,

So tightly knit, the truth was plain:

One multiplied by one is one.

 

Subtracting lovers who retort

That what chance coupled, choice can part

(As if mere effort could relax

The clutches of a paradox)

At last to their amazement find

Themselves the dwindled dividend,

 

Deep in that hell where Don Juan

Knows he has added names in vain

Since all the aggregate is is lost

To him, not widowed but a ghost,

While those bereaved of one possess

A minus greater than his plus.

 

True love begins with algebra

Those casual actors x and y,

Nonentities whose magic role

Is to turn nothing into all.

To be and not to be, to mate:

The links are chance, the chain is fate.

 

Michael Hamburger

Done