Martin Robertson

Now and Then

Fair Exchange

Everything we love

puts on features of

all that we loved before,

and perhaps of all

that we ever shall.

We love a landscape or

a picture or a face

—person, thing and place,

though we may love it for

(it seems) its own unique

self—yet they partake

of one another and

the others of their kind.

Sex is everywhere

as Freud made us aware,

and he was surely right

but wrong surely to say

the traffic is one-way.

Sex lends her delight

to every joy, her stress

to all our wickedness,

yet’s as much taker quite

as giver—throws upon

her basic monotone

scents, colours, notes, the whole

dream-treasury of the soul.