What Is True Love? Poem by Heather Marie Mortimer

What is true love, oh tell me,
What shall it be?
Is it no more than all the
Bright things that I see?
Be they beautiful or merry
Or sickly-sweet so
Rightly I bear this constant
Tragedy I sow.

O'er fantasies' paths have I
Trudged into dreams
Tho not a dream in this nightmare
Has been what it seems.
Yet awake am I, in this long-since
Seared pain
Looking back on slow years,
I cannot accord gain.

So to passion I fly
From this numb ecstasy
That a fire may consume
The very passion I be.
For slow years seem torture
When read on young face
Long years should not imprint
In such here, a new place.

But to surpass the seconds
With so urgent heartbeat,
Bliss to die in the place
Where I followed my feet.