LOVE IS

For Margaret Sanford

Sad romance near a graveyard sunset,
Lonely love, sweet pain,
Time is agony, the heart yet,
Has cruelty of the hellish rain,
Love is sweet loneliness in the sun,
Sadly, tearing the heart until love’s toil is done,
Romance on a tombstone of time,
To love is a deadly crime,
It is a delicate piece of heavenly hell,
It is twirling downward in a gravely well,
In the sunset, in the hellish rain,
A romance of love is a sad death again and again,
Agonized in time of cruel, sweet, lonely heart,
Like a grave, love ends, as pain is agonized apart,
Beautiful as the sunset, deadly as the hilly rain,
Love takes the heart through toiled pain,
In a sad loneliness of a graveyard filled with morn,
Deadly in sweetness of beauty and a sad heart of scorn,
Romance of love, death in a tomb of time,
Always in hell’s rainy sunset for love is a lonely crime.

Theodore Arthur Pinnock
July 26, 1980