To Love
What can a creature do
But love among creatures?
To love and forget, to love and mislove
To love, unlove, to love?
Always, and even with glazed eyes, to love?
What can, I ask, the loving being
Alone, in universal rotation, do
But also turn, and love?
To love what the sea brings to the shore
What it buries, and what, in the sea breeze
Is salt, or the precision of love, or simple longing?
To solemnly love the palms of the desert
What is surrender or expectant adoration
And to love the inhospitable, the rough
A vase without flowers, a floor of iron
And the inert chest, and the street seen in a dream
And a bird of prey
This is our destiny: To love without measure
Distributed among the perfidious or null things
Unlimited donation to complete ingratitude
And in the empty shell of love, the timid search
Patiently, for more and more love
To love our very lack of love
And in our dryness, to love the implicit water
And the tacit kiss, and the infinite thirst
