Reproach

The response to my commentary on the DTR has been mixed. On the one hand there are those, sad bruised soldiers that they are, who seem to agree with my position. The responses of these individuals are not at all surprising, for they are the very people out of whom my views were built. Then of course there are those who champion the DTR. This is by no means a surprise for, as I already commented, in principle alone the DTR is very sound. I will freely and gladly concede the sound reasoning behind the DTR, for this is the very thing which makes the operation’s failings so oppressive. We are only disappointed because we first expect it to work. Yes, the DTR may indeed work and succeed in certain respects. No doubt it will effectively clamp and restrain a relationship from going where it ought not to go. It may even act as a spur and push people forward into commitment, marriage, children, mortgages and and other such directions. But can real and romantic love come out of such prudent calculations? To my mind love should move with all the speed and force of gravity, which is to say at no fixed of controlled rate what so ever. The DTR’s intrusion is simply mechanical beyond redemption. And so while the DTR may produce something, it is nothing I should wish to consume or be consumed by. That is why I redefined it ‘Destroying the Romance’ and not ‘Destroying the Relationship.’ For the two, quite sadly, are not one and the same.

Reproach
by DH Lawrence

Had I but known yesterday,
Helen, you could discharge the ache
Out of the cloud;
Had I known yesterday you could take
The turgid electric ache away,
Drink it up with your proud
White body, as lovely white lightning
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,
I might have hated you, Helen.

But since my limbs gushed full of fire,
Since from out of my blood and bone
Poured a heavy flame
To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone
Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,
You have no name.
Earth of my swaying atmosphere,
Substance of my inconstant breath,
I cannot but cleave to you.

Since you have drunken up the drear
Painful electric storm, and death
Is washed from the blue
Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.
You are strong and passive and beautiful,
I come like winds that uncertain hover;
But you
Are the earth I hover over.