I don’t have time for you,
Because you’re the one I love the most.
I would want you all the time. That wouldn’t do.
So I will have to be satisfied with your ghost.
I love you too much. Goodbye.
Pity my hands that cannot touch you. Pity my eye.
The dialogue between you and I will be replaced
By a dialogue with myself.
The questions and responses will be evenly spaced
Like those dialogues of Plato sitting on my shelf.
You will be a poem in my mind.
I will see you, vaguely. You won’t always be nice,
You won’t always be kind.
Sometimes you will give me bad advice.
I will have time to explore
Why you loved—and why I loved you more.
That’s when our love was physical, and each moment was new
And everything seemed beautiful,
As when you experience something for the first time, and it thrills you.
When I first heard Borges quote, Keats’ “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,”
Homer, Chapman, Keats, Borges, and I—all lived in time’s river.
By streams and dreams I know a lot. But I won’t have to tell.
What I reflect on will not have to be repeated at all
To you. I will never have to take your call.
I won’t have to flatter you, or tell you the right thing.
The truth will be all that matters.
You will live inside me; otherwise you’ll be nothing—
My mind eschewing the outside, which the outside flatters.
Today, in my thoughts, I discovered why
You loved me less, and caused our love to die.
Your whole life being vacant and painful, our love
Did not recall past joys for you, the way it did for me:
My strange forbidden crushes, my lovely past was
Revisited: a string of my firsts: losing my virginity,
Children. But your life was a miserable portion
Of abuse, fruitless relationships, an abortion.
Mad and hopeless love belonged to me;
You lived in all my touchstones prior;
I loved you more; you were an idle god in your superiority—
But the superior depth of my past joys fed my desire;
I was weaker, by mad love and past happiness blessed;
You were coolly above me, but by love’s standards, I was the best.
I had my poetry. I still have my poetry. I still love you the most.
But I don’t have time for you. And I know why. So welcome, ghost.