love is an answer to a question that has not been askd

Among my friends love is a great sorrow.
It has become a daily burden, a feast,
a gluttony for fools, a heart’s famine.
We visit one another asking, telling one another.
We do not burn hotly, we question the fire.
We do not fall forward with our alive
eager faces looking thru into the fire.
We stare back into our own faces.
We have become our own realities.
We seek to exhaust our lovelessness.

Among my friends love is a painful question.
We seek out among the passing faces
a sphinx-face who will ask its riddle.
Among my friends love is an answer to a question
that has not been askd.
Then ask it.

Among my friends love is a payment.
It is an old debt for a borrowing foolishly spent.
And we go on, borrowing and borrowing from each other.
Among my friends love is a wage
that one might have for an honest living.

[Robert Duncan {1919-1988}, 'Among My Friends', from City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ed.]