AND because you love me
think you you do not hate me?
Ha, since you love
me
to
ecstasy
it follows
you hate me to ecstasy.
Because when you hear me
go down the road outside the house
you must come to the window
to watch me go,
do
you think it is pure worship?
Because, when I sit in the room,
here, in my own
house,
and you
want to enlarge yourself with this friend of mine,
such a friend as he
is,
yet you cannot
get beyond your awareness of me
you are held back by my being in the same
world
with
you,
do you think
it is bliss alone?
sheer harmony?
No doubt if I were dead, you must
reach into death after
me,
but would not
your hate reach even more madly
than your love?
your impassioned, unfinished
hate?
Since you have a passion for me,
as I for you,
does not that passion stand
in your way like a
Balaam’s ass?
and
am I not Balaam’s ass
golden-mouthed occasionally?
But mostly, do you not detest
my bray?
Since you are confined in the orbit of me
do you not loathe the
confinement?
Is
not even the beauty and peace of an orbit
an intolerable prison to
you,
as it is to
everybody?
But we will learn to submit
each of us to the balanced,
eternal orbit
wherein we circle on our fate
in strange conjunction.
What is chaos, my love?
It is not freedom.
A disarray of falling stars
coming to nought.