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128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
I
Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought: I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.
XLV
I should like to believe that it is some evidence of love when I can truthfully say: Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me wishing it where.
XLVIII
«I will love You forever», swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love You at 4:15 p.m. next Tuesday: is that still as easy?
L
This poem I wished to write was to have expressed exactly what I mean when I think the words I love you, I cannot know exactly what I mean; it was to have been self-evidently true, but words cannot verify themselves. So this poem will remind unwritten. This doesn’t matter. Tomorrow You will be arriving; if I were writing a novel in which both of us were characters, I know exactly how I should greet You at the station: adoration in the eye; on the tongue banter and bawdry. But who knows exactly how I shall greet You? Dame Kind? Now, that’s an idea. Couldn’t one write a poem (slightly unpleasant, perhaps) about her?