The one I loved before you
I could not understand.
She was the dry sea.
But I love you. The soaked land.
When I first saw her, the skeleton which moves
And how it moves, was the first thing I loved,
Not the flesh which all flesh loves.
I saw what mimes the flesh is the deft skeleton that moves.
I loved in her what mimes what loves.
I do not love her, but what she moves.
Admittedly, I still see
In my mind’s eye how she moves.
She captured my eye—
And everything else—which must die.
My poems will blow over the empty sea
Of her sometimes, so please pardon me.
I describe her as the premonition of you,
As your precursor,
Though I did not dream that would be her
When her heart sailed into my heart.
A gaudy ship. I succumbed to her grand art,
Her modest thickness,
But most of all, her sickness.
I was cured by both the actual and the fake.
The mist which fell when it hit the lake.
I had no idea that you
Would exist. And take
Her existence, too.
You understand the skeleton that moves—
Moves, and mimes all flesh that loves.
I swore she would keep going on.
But you’ll be, when everything else that loves is gone.