Ruse, The

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 2001 by Gluck, Louise

They sat far apart deliberately, to experience, daily, the sweetness of seeing each other across great distance. They understood

instinctively that erotic passion thrives on distance, either actual (one is married, one no longer loves the other) or spurious, deceptive, a ruse

miming the subordination of passion to social convention, but a ruse, so that it demonstrated not the power of convention but rather

the power of eros to annihilate objective reality. The world, time, distance-- withering like dry fields before the fire of the gaze

Never before. Never with anyone else. And after the eyes, the hands. Experienced as glory, as consecration

Sweet. And after so many years, completely unimaginable.

Never before. Never with anyone else. And then the whole thing repeated exactly with someone else. Until it was finally obvious

that the only constant was distance, the servant of need. Which was used to sustain whatever fire burned in each of us.

The eyes, the hands-less crucial. than we believed. In the end distance was sufficient, by itself.