Haruko/Love Poems

WHAT IS THIS thing called love, in the poems of June Jordan, artist, teacher, social critic, visionary of human solidarity? First of all, it's a motive; the power Che Guevara was trying to invoke in his much-quoted assertion: "At the risk of appearing ridiculous . . . the true revolutionary is moved by great feelings of love." I think also of Paul Nizan: "You think you are innocent if you say, 'I love this woman and I want to act in accordance with my love,' but you are beginning the revolution. . . . You will be driven back: to claim the right to a human act is to attack the forces responsible for all the misery in the world." Neither of them, admittedly, was claiming the love of a woman for women, the love of a man for men, as revolutionary, as a human act. But the motive is "directed by desire" in Jordan