Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Vol. 5 Num 841 Sat. October 07, 2006       Point-Counterpoint Sustainable love Muhammad Habibur Rahman Do you know? I do not know What is sustainable love! Ask the homing pigeon or the turtle-dove Cooing, cooing and wooing its love. Oh my love! Do you hear, do you hear? Wherever per capita income a year Less than one thousand dollars Say the economics experts and scholars, Democracy may not even last a term of five years. But where per capita income a year Above four thousand three hundred thirty five dollars Democracy may last for years and years. For sustainable love How much income a couple must have? Per year, per month or per day? An exercise in futility, they say, In a degrading frustration And an inconsolable desolation Where half of the world's population Lives a day in an abject squalor On a mere pittance of a dollar. Ask the scholars of the dismal science On what reliance and on what compliance Can love be sustained, Can love be maintained, or retained? On less than two dollars a day in the end? Well, she'll quarrel or you'll quarrel And some times both of you'll quarrel. And there'll be no one to answer the bell. Your's will appear to be a deserted home! Difficult to tell who would then first desert whom.