Alexis: "I do not understand what love is"

In honor of Valentines day, let's do a little poem about not understanding love at all. Because let's be honest, love is not something that's easy to understand--or even, that can be understood. It's good, though. If Valentine's is a thing you do with your partner, here is your head's up that it's tomorrow. Prepare for some time spent together.

“As I was walking from the Peiraios beset
By troubles and despair, philosophy came over me.
And all the painters now seem to me to be ignorant
About love, and, to put it simply, so is everyone else
Who fashions images of him as a god.
For he is neither female nor male, and again,
He is not a god or mortal; nor is he foolish
Or wise, but he is drawn together from everywhere
And carries many shapes in one form.
For he has a man’s boldness with a woman’s restraint;
he has the senselessness of madness.
But the reason of a thinker; he has a beast’s ferocity,
The toil of the unbreakable, and the avarice of a god.
Indeed, by Athena and the gods, I do not understand
What love is, but still it is the type of thing
I have said only without this name.”

Alexis (fr.386k from his Phaedrus; found at Athenaeus 13.13)[translation]