“Immortality” —Diotima
Everyone knows the beautiful will be loved, no matter what the beautiful do,
But if you look a little closer, Rodrigo, you’ll find this isn’t true.
If you don’t love, you will not be loved.
The one who admires you—
Because you are beautiful, and a good person, too—
Wants your love more than he wants you.
And to get your love, resorts to designs, strategies, confusions,
And hate will creep into love, since impatient love demands illusions,
And desire naturally thinks of horrible schemes,
To make love love in a faithless life of unequal dreams.
Do you believe love is possible, the great beauty making up her mind
To love you, but there is always something missing, something not right,
Isn’t that true, Rodrigo? Why was she, why were you, so angry? So unkind?
Remember, three is the magic number in life:
Soft shoulders, bony shoulders, muscular shoulders.
Or the maiden, the wife, the ex-wife,
Disco, punk, and the ballad. To organize, you need only three folders.
Souls of gold, silver, and clay.
The ugly, the beautiful, and the most beautiful far away.
All good people live and fit into three:
Innocence, drunkeness, and then a new and wiser sobriety.
You love them, they don’t love you—these comprise the first two
Which afflict us all, Rodrigo! You love them. They don’t love you.
But if you want to be cured of all misery,
Let me tell you of the third. Listen to me.
The beautiful is not loved the way people think.
The poet’s eye possesses beauty more than any man with strong arms can.
No beauty is possessed. Beauty is poetry and madness. Drink
All beauty and throw the cup away.
The third is God—who doesn’t want to be a man.