Falling in love

This short poem fuses romance and war, suggesting that ignorance is what lets people surrender themselves to either one.

Titled 'Falling in love' but opening 'And falling for war', the poem yokes the two from the first line, then runs a bleak conditional: 'If I don't know it / If I haven't had it / Then I would be intelligent / Then I would not give / my life for it'. Intelligence is defined as inexperience - the wisdom of never having loved or fought, and so never having reason to die.

The opening 'And' makes the poem feel like a fragment torn from a longer thought, as if war is simply the next item after love in a list of things one falls for. The pun in 'falling' does the structural work the title sets up: falling in love and falling for war are the same descent, and the body that has fallen once is primed to give itself away. The logic is deliberately inverted from common sense - here knowing and having are the disqualifying conditions, and the only safe person is the one who has been spared experience. There is a quiet self-indictment underneath: the speaker is plainly not intelligent by his own definition, because he has had it, and the poem is the residue of someone who already gave or would give his life. Short as it is, the piece refuses any romance of sacrifice; to 'give / my life for it' is the symptom of foolishness, not nobility.