This idea came to me out of nowhere tonight—
as when one notices a sound, a light
which reveals in a certain way a room;
it has nothing to do with anything;
but it frightened me more than anything else:
What happened with you could have happened with somebody else.
She and I, like you and I, would have wondered why love
between us was allowed to happen:
not complicated, in many ways, not unusual,
but simply what people read about as love.
It’s what we know: two people
going through a wedding ceremony, or two
people having encounters in a book,
maybe one meeting, or not any, or few;
encounters which are encounters of thought;
for example, gloom covers the earth—dark gloom—
I want to know if you are the one I always sought.