Only to You
"INTENDING, DELICATE"
"Intending"—
Oh help me risk
saying this.
Hear! "Intending"
now signifies:
attending:
horrified
in all the chasms of exasperation
that plunge from your blood's
unceasing lamentation,
oh hear it; that from now on cast
my To-You into "woe! why!"; whose load,
at every coming, you tax
me with as burden clutching close,
ever closer, ever tighter,
dragging at all emotion's flux,
draining the delicate from every touch.
Intending: attending . . .
rest repudiated,
joy eliminated.
"Intending and delicate"—
so may the fire of misery
forge it, cut it, free
in this "and," in transit
diminishing.
What rang rings.
It sinks
into lament's unknown wares,
sings into what no one dares,
what's formed from the wreath, takes place,
gentles love and woe into the Same.