Desamour Poem by gershon hepner

DÉSAMOUR


Disenchantment underscored
by painful disillusion
is love’s fate once it is deplored,
and reaches its conclusion..
The French have a got a word for it,
they call it désamour.
The word denotes the love that’s quit
your heart once its allure
has vanished, so that you’ve become
bereft of those sensations
that used to cause you to succumb
to amorous relations
with him or her to whom you now
no longer feel attracted.
With désamour you disavow
all love from past subtracted
when, falling out of love, you turn
love into désamour,
and spring of new love you won’t spurn,
you hope, but can’t be sure.

Steven Erlanger (“For French Voters, ‘None of the Above’ Seems Best, ” NYT,10/16/11)
writes that the French election campaign is the election of désamour, meaning a falling out of love, a disenchantment mixed with illusion, since there is not much excitement about Nicolas Sarkozy’s possible opponents, Françoise Hollande and Martine Aubry. Hollande won her runoff against Aubry by 56%.

10/16/11 #8132