Variations On A Word

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell it.

We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word Love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.

Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood

Like BF was saying tonight, "it" is definitely there, but is "it" enough for them to risk it all, to "hold on" or to "let go"?

Atwood calls "it" the word that "has only four letters" - a little word that purports to hold up so much. "Far too short", "too sparse". Now, that's quite true, isn't it? "It's not love that [polar bears] don't want to fall into, but that fear."

Only a much longer Love, made of Infinite letters, that fills all of silence and Eternity will do.

(Came across the Brian Evans gallery of soundscapes. It's lovely to see how he puts colour and shapes to music.)