A Love Poem

Amber Sun (151.016,237.254,212.184)

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love -- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek --
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

As the Ruin Falls, by CS Lewis

As I understand it, CS Lewis wrote this poem after the re-occurrence of his wife's cancer. It is his honest assessment of how far he misses the mark of really loving. And how he thanks her for helping him to learn to love.