This poem is called, "The Trouble with In."
It's four letters-- four words, not three.
"The Trouble with In."
Someone told me once, who was teaching English
as a second language, that the way you--
the thing that gave away non-native speakers, however
affluent their accents were, however
well-tutored they were in vocabulary,
what gave them away was not the big vocabulary words,
it was the prepositions.
It was how they were using--
I mean, you know like when you use--
well, this isn't-- these aren't exactly prepositions,
in this usage.
They act as adverbs in a sense.
But that all those words you can put after the word,
hold, like hold in, hold for, hold to, hold off, I mean,
there are a million-- hold on.
There are a million different things,
but just that little word changes everything.
And those are all the little colloquial things that
amount to native understanding.
But I got obsessed with prepositions for a while,
so apologia.
"The Trouble with In."
In English, we're in trouble.
Love's a place we fall into.
So sooner or later, they ask, how deep?
Time is a measure of extent.
So sooner or later, they ask, how long?
We keep some comforters inside a box, the heart inside a chest,
but still it's there the trouble with the dark accumulates
the most.
The end of life is said to be a boat to a tropic, good or bad.
The suitor wants to size up what he's getting into,
so he gets her measurements.
But how much is enough?
The best man cannot help him out,
he's given to his own uncomfortable cummerbund.
Inside the mirror, several bridesmaids
look and look in the worst half light,
too long, too little, not enough alike.
And who can stand to be made up for good?
And who can face being adored?
I swear there is no frame that I would keep you in.
I didn't love a shape and find you'd fit it.
Every day, your sight was a surprise you made.
My taste made sense, made eyes.
But when you set me up in high esteem,
I was a star that's bound in time to fall,
the bounds, the soil of the song.
I loved you to no end.
And when you said, so far, I knew the idiom.
It meant so long.