Saying it without saying it
Is the entire creed of the poet.
He will read you, slowly, Swinburne,
Or Wordsworth. To love? Or learn?
He wants you to live beside
His verses of inspiration; the fertile ground
Where, together, you and he may hide,
Greenery shaped to your desires—
Whether it is wet, or steep, or round.
The poet announces when the poem is over;
He says when the inspiration quits;
He loves you almost as much as he loves other poets.
A poem keeps reading him.
A semi-colon keeps him up.
A poem has the night figured out;
It knows every moment. Though sleepless and full of doubt.
He failed to say whether he would be
Able to live with you. Read his poetry;
There you might hear
Of pearl and white; that was a tear;
He didn’t say; he didn’t say;
He failed; it’s true—he loved you entirely.
And aren’t you a poet, too? Don’t we cry, “I didn’t love them enough?”
Why can’t you say it? “I love! I love!”