If you have no faith I can depict
how delicately the sensitive turns to sin—
or make a world with verse and fit the pieces in—
and get the shadows right—
by going beyond black and white,
even getting the color of your lover’s skin
exactly right,
then do not read me, or talk to me again.
Live with things. Converse with actual men.
You’ll not finally understand what any of it meant.
Your head is thick. No thought can make a dent.
Thought is for the memory and problems solved in haste.
My poetry—and the world, as well—is to you a wide waste;
I am sensitive and need to think, apart,
and in solitude understand the tides and errors of my entangled heart.
Only through duplication—my poem filtering your eyes—
the 18th century the same as the 21st century lies
(an opium prostitute reading Sade asking when will modernism start)
can I hope to know and not be murdered by surprise.
I need to keep things at arm’s length even as things
murder me. Silent—before this strange dog sings.