Love

The difficult part of love
Is being selfish enough,
Is having the blind persistence
To upset an existence
Just for your own sake.
What cheek it must take.

And then the unselfish side-
How can you be satisfied
Putting someone else first
So that you come off worst?
My life is for me.
As well ignore gravity.

Still virtuous or vicious,
love suits most of us.
Only the bleeder found
selfish this wrong way out
Is ever wholly rebuffed,
And he can get stuffed.

Philip Larkin