My own is the telegraph of another’s
will, the living text of foreign desire,
copying news only ever copied
imperfectly, original to no one,

but given again a palled night long past.
I am suspicious of the thing. It works
in me, not by request, my ruling rhythm
always to a beat I can’t subdue.

I can’t stop it, I can’t make it louder,
can’t teach it to love you if it won’t —
this pulsing mass, unwanted Quasimodo
abandoned on the doorsteps of ourselves.

Let it die. What’s shared in our silences
can be refined in our figuring — try
any new star, for example: traces
of dust in space, intending of themselves

to be apart, find in their shared disdain
a trust, and, pressing close, begin to burn.
We’re born of what is made within this rending.
It isn’t love that is unending.