Quick and Bitter
Quick and Bitter - meaning Summary
Love Erodes Into Language
The poem traces a relationship’s shift from intimate, “slow and sweet” nights to a sudden, bitter ending. Physical closeness once felt precise and joyful but is later recalled as sharp and painful. In the present, pragmatic phrases and repetitive language replace tenderness, producing a grinding emotional landscape. The speaker suggests that as love erodes they fill the gap with talk and order, when staying together might have led instead to a shared silence.
Read Complete AnalysesThe end was quick and bitter. Slow and sweet was the time between us, slow and sweet were the nights when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love of your body which came between them. And when I entered into you it seemed then that great happiness could be measured with precision of sharp pain. Quick and bitter. Slow and sweet were the nights. Now is bitter and grinding as sand— "Let's be sensible" and similiar curses. And as we stray further from love we multiply the words, words and sentences so long and orderly. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.
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