To return from the dead and smile at the one who tried to kill you—
Is there a greater fantasy?
Is there a greater feeling in the world?
And doesn’t this happen a lot in love? Yes, it happened to me.
It is the wild triumph which lifts my poetry.
Knowing and suffering happens to the majority—
For what can you do when the vow of love is broken?
There is nothing that can take the word back
When your lover who no longer loves you has spoken—
And there is no vengeance against love.
In love, revenge is not appropriate.
I was in love with her. Only her! I was her poet.
I could not be angry. I could not complain, or cry.
I could not love another. And if revenge were my goal,
Vengeance had to be softer than a sigh.
As a poet, my dream was to follow Wordsworth
And use my poetry to “see into the life of things.”
But not in an arrogant, or god-like way, only, on my word,
For love. She flirted with me. I found love in her eyes
And we loved. Doubt lingered. Is that a surprise?
Deeply in love, I looked into her soul, and read every wish
Which loved in her soul to swim—
Others? Of course it mattered if she mentioned him.
Love never exists alone—the system has planets.
I was not obsessive. But I knew
A thing or two.
A mighty love has to put up with things
Which have nothing to do with love. Kings
Of plot and intrigue, with their sway
Can sometimes sweep the love of poets away.
Love will hang on a window, watching,
Love will sigh by a lattice,
And she, wavering in love, was pulled by status
Towards a shameful, unspoken decision
Which began to creep into her manner as derision.
I spoke calmly. With modern facts, I used the same intrigue
Against her—she paused—she knew she was out of her league.
I don’t need to tell you how complex modern life can be.
My breath did not cloud the glass. You know the idea in poetry
That speech is alive—even when poetry is dead? That was me.
When they told her they wanted to see her, she felt the same dread
As I did, from the same system, with the same persons at the head.
My revenge made no noise. The sealed poem was read. Poetry,
At its best, solves even love—caught, as it was, in society.