Why Must We Love? Poem by Ernest Hilbert

Epithalamium, for Elizabeth Gold and Daniel Felsenfeld

Why must we love? Perhaps as Plato thought,
Zeus hacked jealous man into two parts,
So we struggle, our whole lives, to reunite;
Or Shakespeare's lovers—struck through with stars, caught
In a love that promises doom—who find their hearts
Seared like coals and drown them in endless night.
But this is too much for us! We are not
Useful myths, nor mere characters undone
On a stage; yet our two strengths are as great
As these and other stories we are taught:
Planets trained eternally around one sun,
On looped orbits, two distinct but linked mates,
Lit by the same light, drawn by the same force
That formed us all and keeps us in its course.