I remember twenty, ridiculous in love,
my own heartache from a love unreturned and bold,
humiliated to the point strangers pitied me,
even as I laughed, before the rhyme on it, put on a wall, sold.
Imagine a college thespian scene
where the English major, who scored the lead,
pretty in make-up, tall, the acne covered up,
kissed every female at the cast party,
to “find out if they were lesbian,”
eleven of them, all told.
The next morning the apology in the green room:
a rhyme taped up clumsily, the varying, tricky, passion
already forgiven, already cold.
I had many such affairs, empty, lacking all perspective,
but even in restraint, I did love. Idiotic rhymes, sighs, blood beating in every part of the body,
can attest how bold.
You want to talk hunger?
Yet, I maintain
nothing compares to the hungry, passionate regret
of the love-sick old.
Practice on me your poetry,
which now, in your old age, is more than strong.
Maude has passed into the grave,
but William, here by the green river ice,
give us your song.