I want the world to know
I love you. The world must know.
Knowing causes love, as love, to grow.
Love can be a secret appetite
And think itself love, but secrecy,
And all that crawls inside the night
Feeds delusion; no poetry is worth the name
Unless it bring the poet fame.
The unknown has only the unknown to blame,
The unknown is the greatest shame.
The death of the poet himself is bliss,
But the death of his poetry is hardly this.
His poems should be read and loved,
Not by springs and pools of the dove,
Where nightingales sing aloud, out of love,
But in the eyes and ears of men,
Who memorize poems, so they can be loved again.
If the world thinks you are wrong,
I’ll correct them with my song.
There are poets who celebrate drink,
And seem sensual and wise
As they write that soon tomorrow
Comes, ending happiness and sorrow,
So go ahead, and drink today,
And sacred love must hasten away.
But I will not drown myself in any set of eyes,
Loving this one at dusk, that one at sunrise;
Love is not a brief instant.
Love is not what we quickly want.
Wine can be a paradise,
But love that lasts is best; sensuality betrays
Tomorrow, and all the ways
We died in our yelping yesterdays,
Hoping for an arrow
To repel all sorrow.
The known is what we know;
And all that we have, we can have before we go,
In the understanding of the going. Only then may we
Live in our poetry.
Girls who are socially needy
Circle around men, the lustful and greedy,
And find the hell of secrecy
And shame. When a girl is crying for help, trapped and alone,
Raped in the trivial unknown,
A secret shame which imitates death
A secret lust hides in the invisible breath
Forever. Of poetry never read. Secret life is truly dead.
After the shame, we know the truth: love is how much of love is known.
Marry in the sun. True love does not wish to be secret, or alone.
