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Most love poems give you roses. This one gives you WD40 — a rust remover. In seventeen quietly devastating lines, Fanthorpe makes the case that the most heroic love is the kind that shows up, checks the insurance, laughs at your terrible jokes, and holds the whole rickety structure of your life up with pride. Like Atlas held the sky.
A gentle paean for the responsible lovers — the ones who remember to plant bulbs and deal with dentists and send postcards to the lonely. Fanthorpe asks us to see this not as the small print of love, but as its very heart.
We share poems in good faith and with full credit. A Letter to the Poets →
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Atlas
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget the milkman;
which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way the money goes;
which deals with dentists and Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely;
which upholds the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living, which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows – what time and weather are doing – to my brickwork;
insulates my faulty wiring; laughs at my dry rotten jokes;
remembers my need for gloss and grouting;
which keeps my suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
U.A. Fanthorpe · 1995
We share poems in good faith and with full credit. A Letter to the Poets →
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