othello poetry
“Cruel Love” by Dwight Moody Bernardo:
What’s the sense of living
When your heart has died it’s beating…
What is life’s pure meaning…
when you’re already gone and leaving…
Does this love cost all my life
And now it’s worth like strife…
Then Stabs my heart with love’s death knife…
To end a light in front as live…
IS it so wrong to save a love…
Because you’re now a flying dove
Oh this cruel love that makes me weep…
Will you lay me now to forever’s sleep?
“Cruel Love” talks about a person who feels lost and confused after the death of a loved one. They express their perplexed emotions about how a force as sweet as love can cause this amount of despair. I feel as though this poem is perfectly representative of the grief and guilt felt by Othello after his murder of Desdemona. A despair so great as to cause him to commit suicide.
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An interesting literate technique that Bernardo repeatedly uses his poem is questioning, which does not seem to be directed at the audience but at a higher order being, demanding for answers. Questions like “What’s the sense of living” and “Does this love cost all my life” shows the bewilderment of the author and genuineness in his love for the other person. Other questions like “is it so wrong to save a love?” display the author’s frustration and anger with this consequence of love.
My favourite line from this poem is “What’s the point of living when your heart has died its beating”. At first, this comment may not make sense but I believe it smartly refers to the beating of the heart when someone is in love. Then once one has lost their love, their heart stops beating.
The final rhyming couplet of the poem is extremely interesting and can cause the reader to draw a direct line from this poem to “Othello”. These may even be close to the last thoughts of our protagonist in Shakespeare’s tragedy of the Moor.
