The Art of Loving: For the 47th Anniversary of Our Conjugal Life, April 30, 2026
The short poem below is a villanelle I wrote two years ago, based on the poet Elizabeth Bishop’s sublime work “One Art.”
It is dedicated to my dear wife Anne to mark our 47 years of life together, beginning April 30, 1979.
On April 30 of last year, when we celebrated by feasting on Ottawa’s finest Chinese food, Anne was herself: healthy, feisty, full of life.
The following week she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive, incurable, and lethal form of brain cancer.
She now has a very short time left to live.
The Art of Loving
The art of loving is not so hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be loved that we should but love them so much faster.
Love someone every day. Accept the lustre
of kind and friendly people, the chats so quickly spent.
The art of loving is not so hard to master.
Then practice loving deeper, loving faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. Loving these won’t bring disaster.
I’ve loved my long-lost family. And look! The last, or
next-to-last, of my dear cousins, has yet to relent.
The art of loving is not so hard to master.
I’ve loved six cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I’ve roamed, three rivers, a continent.
Now gone, I miss them, but leaving them was no disaster.
—But loving you (the gentle voice, the gestures
I adore) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of loving is not too hard to master
though its ultimate loss through death is (Write it!) a disaster.
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/the-art-of-loving/
Villanelle
A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. See “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “The House on the Hill.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/villanelle
The extraordinary Canadian singer/ songwriter/ musician Andy McClelland has created a wonderful song version of my poem:
The Art of Love: A song for Anne – Robert McBryde
If you feel like keeping track of Anne’s cancer journey, I’m chronicling it in prose and poetry here:
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/news/
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
