Cupid Poem by Rory Hudson

(For Londiwe Buthelezi, who published a fine poem on the same theme here last week.)

Cupid is a foolish boy
who plays with hearts as with a toy,
sending sharp arrows through the air
to pierce hearts no matter where.

A heart’s a brittle, fragile thing,
more delicate than any string,
and many a heart will quickly break
because of Cupid’s sad mistake.

Yet Cupid may much later find
in wreckage that he’s left behind
that some hearts have begun to mend
and will be happy in the end.

They are the ones that come to know
that these things always must be so;
that many a heart that does not break
is doomed instead to always ache

and wither, in a life that’s dry,
for other life that passed it by.
Can any say that he is blest
to have no arrow in the breast?

So, Cupid, you may do your worst -
you’re not the last and not the first
to cut and thrust at human hearts
and break them in a thousand parts.

Each one of us will live to tell
that for himself now tolls the bell;
Perhaps when hell has frozen o’er
humanity will grieve no more.