I need help on understanding a poem, anyone want to help?

Question

Title- Lies About Love

We are a liars, because

the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,

whereas letters are fixed,

and we live by the letter of truth.

The love I feel for my friend, this year,

is different from the love I felt last year.

If it were not so, it would be a lie.

Yet we reiterate love! love! love!

as if it were a coin with a fixed value

instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.


Thank for you for helping me with this poem. Any thoughts are apprieciated.

Answer 1

The way I see it... the past doesn't matter, and what we say will happen or do doesn't happen, we live by rules that are made and are suited for a certain time frame, but we as a peaople and as a culture change what was truth yesterday, may not be tur today. Love changes, humans change, our feeling either stronger and make us grow further away from people. We love our friends more each year and we dislike our foes more each year. And though our feeling have grown we still express ourselves with the same words and in the same way. The word love is over used and not used in the porper way, because not alll "Loves" are equal, some "loves" are stronger than others....... Hope this helps you look at it in a different light

Answer 2

It simply means ..that we dont know how to love , we love everything we see , we love today and we forget 2moro , we give love to whomever we want .. and we take it out and we leave the ones that we loved as if there is nothing ..

a bit more explanation :

We are a liars, because




the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow

u cant explain that but when u combine it with

"The love I feel for my friend, this year,

is different from the love I felt last year.

If it were not so, it would be a lie.
"


it starts to make sense now .. so it means that once you're in love then it shall not change 2day , 2moro or 1 year later , or it will not be love and it will be a lie under the name of love ..





Yet we reiterate love! love! love!

as if it were a coin with a fixed value



we do love now .. and we break up , we love 2moro and we break up .. the day after it and we break up ... as if you want to have something with a fixed value .. and once u dont get it , you just walk away ...


instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.

in my own opinion .... :

he meant .. that love is like a flower .. and that flower need somenoe to take care about it .. .. if this flower " love " is about to die because those who are incharge to take care of it are being carless , then it will sure die ... BUT .. when it dies .. there is still a hope for abother bud to get around :) .. if they started taking care of the flower again .. and gave it what ot needs to open a new bud ...

Answer 3

"We are a liars, because/the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,"

Nothing is constant, everything is relative to time. Just as the world is forever in flux, so too are our bodies, our souls, constantly changing, shifting with our experiences, so that we are not quite the same person today as we were yesterday. To say that what we held true yesterday is fixed and absolute so that it will always stay the same is a mistake, because as we change, so do our personal worlds. Today I may say "X", but down the road, "X" may not hold the same value for me, and the fact that I said it in the past makes me a liar.

"whereas letters are fixed,/and we live by the letter of truth."

Words are not fluid like the ideas and concepts that spawn them. Ideas can evolve, shift, become something else, but a sentence that was spoken remains as is for as long as memory holds it with us. A sentence is an expression of an idea at a particular point in time and lingers even as the idea grows beyond it. Whereas an idea is relative, a word, a sentence, is the absolute, just as truth is an absolute. We measure ourselves against the "letter of truth" but because our lives evolve, we can never be completely honest.

I think the poet is also using a double meaning here. I think "letters" also refers to correspondence--whether love letters, friendly letters, or the latter turning into the former. Even though the concept of love changes for him, the letters will always be there to remind him of how it was--that statement of yesterday that will not ring true tomorrow. Saying "we live by the letter of truth" tells the reader that the love, the relationship, is defined by how it was described, even though that may not be the "truth" of the matter today.

"The love I feel for my friend, this year,/is different from the love I felt last year./If it were not so, it would be a lie."

Again, how we love is a constantly ebbing and flowing concept, just as we and our lives are constantly changing. Because we change over time, to say that you love someone exactly the same way now as you did last year would be a lie. The narrator has gone through a year of experiences and has become a slightly differently person for it. Therefore, how he relates to new experiences will not be exactly the same. His friend has also changed a little and so they obvously cannot relate to each other in exactly the same way, especially having spent so much time together and having gotten to know each other a little better (for better or for worse).

I get the feeling here that the narrator has been with the same person for the year. It could also be interpreted that he has cut his old love loose and has found a new one. In this case, it is impossible to love person B the same way you love person A, even though we use the same word to describe it. The word can't do justice to the different feelings of love you have toward different people.

"Yet we reiterate love! love! love!/as if it were a coin with a fixed value/instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud."

Sticking with my original interpretation that the couple is still together: to keep the relationship going, we have to keep saying how we love the other person. We can't just assume that the love is there, we have to keep stating it, reaffirming it, as if the word is the currency that fuels the relationship. No matter how many times we say it, the word sounds the same, but doesn't describe the shifting nature of love. What you love about someone one day, you may not the next (the flower dies), but you still love them and find something else to cherish (the new bud).

Interpreting it as the narrator finding a new love: we keep falling in and out of love, which means that the love will be different every time, but we still only have limited ways of describing it.

I think this poem says a lot about how a relationship changes over time. It has a hopeful ending, but a kind of bittersweet tone overall, which goes a long way to get across the message that love isn't always pleasant or easy, but it goes on nevertheless. A couple who have been together for 30 years don't love one another in the same way that they did the first time they said "I love you." They simply can't. No matter how much they may long for the feeling of the initial puppy love, it can't come back.

Who wrote that anyway?

Answer 4

I think that what it's saying is that when people say things like "I will always love you", they are lying. That the feeling of being in love makes you say such things and, in doing so, makes you a liar.

"the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow, whereas letters are fixed,"

So, I can love someone today and say to them that I will love them forever. But I pobably won't feel that way forever, and when I stop feeling that way, my love has gone but what I said (the letters) remain the same.

"and we live by the letter of truth."

We believe the words we say are true and live as if they are, even when they are not (or are only temporarily true)

"The love I feel for my friend, this year, is different from the love I felt last year."
"If it were not so, it would be a lie."

I think he's saying that the love he feels for people keeps changing from year to year, and if the love didn't change, and were always the same, then it wouldn't really be love.

"Yet we reiterate love! love! love! as if it were a coin with a fixed value"

We keep talking about love as if it were something that stayed constant and fixed.

"instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud"

When it's actually something that constantly evolves and changes, dies and is reborn as something different.

Answer 5

Anytime you speak about something you do not know as if you knew it, you lie. Love is one of those words we throw around so cheaply, but few of us ever understand what we mean when we say "I love you." In fact, whenever we state something or write something which we believe to be so permanent, so unchangeable that the words or expression will never be altered, we only kid ourselves, lie to ourselves. All is process, becoming.
Nothing exists in that frozen place we want certain things to stay in. The author uses different metaphors to express these ideas.
Love is not a coin of fixed value, but a plant where one flower may bloom, then die, and another bud open. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

It is pointing out that we change, whilst our most ideal concepts remain the same.

This isn't really so, because as you change and last year's love dies, so too, and in the same way, does last year's you die.

So, not only is it a different 'love' but a different 'lover'. To say that words remain the same is to miss the fact that words are merely an expression of a person's inner thoughts. To think that these thoughts stay still is to miss what thoughts are.

You might search out the philosophical dictum, "You can't step in the same stream twice." for further thoughts on this.

Answer 7

basically says quit lying to yourself , letters are written and can't be changed but we live the letter of truth (which can be changed because it isn't written yet) the person loved someone and in a year his love grew to be in love. the last line means plenty more fish in the sea

Answer 8

i guess this means that love changes with the time,We break promises tht we made in the past wch means we are liars.we lied about our love. just like seasons change,people change, love also changes.we leave our dear ones for someone new.this poem is basically about liars

Answer 9

I agree with gerblyn's analysis of the poem
In short, Love is like evolution, ever changing

Answer 10

I think this means that love changes over time and the feelings you have for people change over time. I'm no expert so don't take my answer too seriously.