"'For Love.' Yesterday, I wanted to speak of it.
That sense, above the others, to me."
Let me start it again.
"Yesterday I wanted to speak of it,
that sense above the others to me important
because all that I know derives from what it teaches me.
Today, what is it that is finally so helpless,
different, despairs of its own statement,
wants to turn away endlessly to turn away.
If the moon did not--
no, if you did not I wouldn't either,
but what would I not do, what prevention,
what thing so quickly stopped.
That is love yesterday or tomorrow, not now.
Can I eat what you give me?
I have not earned it.
Must I think of everything as earned.
Now love also becomes a reward so remote from me
I have only made it with my mind.
Here is tedium, despair, a painful sense
of isolation and whimsical if pompous self-regard.
But that image is only of the mind's vague structure,
vague to me because it is my own."
Now-- "Because it is my own.
Love, what do I think to say.
I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask, what have I made you into,
companion, good company, crossed legs with skirt, or soft body
under the bones of the bed.
Nothing says anything but that which it wishes
would come true, fears what else might
happen in some other place, some other time not this one.
A voice in my place, an echo of that only in yours.
Let me stumble into not the confession but the obsession
I begin with now.
For you also, also some time beyond place or place
beyond time, no mind left to say anything
at all, that face gone, now.
Into the company of love it all returns."
Now right.
I don't think--
I've been trying then there's a period of about two years
when I wrote very few poems indeed.
This is not an excuse but I think
what happened was is again, that sense of the books
being summary and all and then I couldn't see anything
clearly possible for a time.
And as it happened, happily, I got
started writing this novel, which curiously became
an exploration of the whole complex of feeling, which much
of this book of poems involves.
I think what I'd like to do--
I thought perhaps to read a story,
but I think what I'd like to do is read
an early chapter of that, which will then just about
finished things up.
The poems that I'm writing now and are
trying to get straight again--
maybe I'll read one of them just to give you a sense.
They're not that much distinct but let's see.
A couple I like.
Something recent.
We'll say within the month.