We Don’t Love Like We Used To
James Joyce, author of the 20th century’s greatest novel, to his chambermaid/mistress/thenwife Nora Barnacle:
My love for you allows me to pray to the
spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness
mirrored in your eyes or to fling you down
under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck
you up behind, like a hog riding a sow,
glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises
from your arse, glorying in the open shame
of your upturned dress and white girlish
drawers and in the confusion of your
flushed cheeks and tangled hair.
These letters fetched a record price at an auction a few years ago. We should all love this way.
