Some months ago, I roughed out an outline of an alternative to Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche story.  In this scenario, love needn’t come to a happy conclusion.

I’ve long pondered the nobility of the romantic sentiment that cannot find a meaningful consummation in real life.  Poetry isn’t real of course–at least, not in the terms we would find most convenient.

Cupid and Venus might be the divine forces to administer romantic love, but I cannot help that as intermediaries to it, they may also find themselves confounded by it–victims of it, even.

This experiment of mine can extend no further than this, my sixth effort.

Venus’s Response to Cupid

Crestfallen son, you squander here your wit,
Arraying me in willful, hurtful aims.
Your poisoned state determines you unfit
To further such intoxicated claims.
Who took his arrows willingly abroad?
Who then miscarried wounding his own skin?
Who, struck by love, is by it justly awed?
Your work bent on yourself, your cries begin!
Both love and justice draw you to this state,
But you would serve to me the bitter blame.
As if familiar gifts bestowed by fate
Have borne your mother’s troubled name.
You and I, mere deities of love,
Will suffer its afflictions from above.