When the artistic invades the non-artistic, which it always does,
(Cathedral scenes inevitably have circling pigeons and doves)
Creating metaphors in the mind of a love which failed—
(We know philosophy flies free when desire is jailed)
We know that virtue and suffering accompany success,
And the more secretly and patiently the victim suffers, the better,
And therefore I want to say that Beethoven’s malady,
Which caused him, in despair and humiliation, to avoid human company
(Your companion hears a distant bell and you do not)
Is exactly like the painter who adds detail to things far away,
When we know that, in reality, in distance less details are seen—
In reality my experience of you is the same. My poetry and dreams,
Which you occupy, are distant even from distance, since they are dreams,
But you are known more in them, than when I see you these days on the street,
And you, from the secret malady of our lost love, avoid me.
I see less, when I see you. I cannot even see when I see, when we nearly meet.