Amour Honestus
The nights were long and cold and bittersweet,
And he made a song for the hell of it.
She stood by the window, a heavenly light
Who created havoc for the hell of it.
He used to fondle every skirt in sight,
Then he fell in love—that’s the hell of it.
Now there’s a courtyard with an abject knight
Yodeling his head off for the hell of it.
O poor me, my Lady, my hopeless plight!
She married a prince for the hell of it.
Honorable, unsatisfied, illicit—
Why bring it up? Just for the hell of it.
The fever spread from poet to poet
Who burned in the high-minded hell of it.
But the Untouchable had him by the throat,
And he stopped singing for the hell of it.
Love is a tower, a trance, a medieval pit.
When I lost you, I knew the hell of it.
Copyright © 2013 by Edward Hirsch. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on October 15, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love—a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I’ve always wondered why this passionate ideal—masochistic, spiritual—travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject." —Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch
Born in Chicago on January 20, 1950, Edward Hirsch is a poet and literary advocate. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (Knopf, 1986), received the National Book Critics Circle Award.