Why can’t this poem please right away?
Why must this poem be read?
Why do poems need to be collected,
To live in books when the poet is dead?
How does someone survive all the hours of a day
Without imagination?
Why do I need to write you a love poem?
Immediately love can be expressed;
But instead we enter the long poem’s waste;
It was a waste to translate my love into loveless words—
So you might deign to see my design in them,
Travel backwards in them, to what is nothing
But my desire, which looks to be satisfied immediately,
Prior to all this useless poetry.
And no poem could cause my desire to go, or stay.
Why can’t love be love?
Why can’t a poem please right away?