What we did doesn’t matter.
I hardly remember what we did together
except for moments filled with joy or despair.
I’m a poet in the way I remember you
and I was a poet when I was there.
You—what you are—eclipses the events,
the circumstances of our indiscretions;
(the years creep and descend)
our incidents and smiles are shadows,
all objects in the dark except you, the one
who I worship guiltily and foolishly:
a broken gravestone, a lost picture, the sun.
Had I seen more things and known
more things, love would have caused me to break promises and laugh.
But I didn’t see.
I was in love with you, madly,
without directions, a printout, or a graph.
You rose to the heights of a famous sigh
lost in a lengthy novel—destroyed by poetry.
In one moment I can ruin the moment—
my smile, what I said, what I meant.
Which is nothing. I cannot be clear. All I do
is speed through the valley—valley and speed which are you.