It’s too late for this poem to be
You, at last, for the first time, seeing me.
It’s all in the way it’s presented, isn’t it?
If I take what I love, and because I love it,
Thrust this poem towards you, then it
Will all have been in vain; it must
Be accidental. The seeing of the poem by you,
The very writing of it, too,
Must be an accident—
So it looks like even I—never knew what it meant.
I thought: if I first let your friend read it,
Then it won’t seem like I need it
Desperately to be read by you—
And through her, by accident, you can see it, too—
But I know you; you would understand
What I did; you would know it was all planned;
How it only mattered that you see
My poem—about you. The poem—by me.
But read this poem, anyway, and pretend
It had nothing to do with me, or you, in the end.