I forgive that you say you love me; the powerful
are always lied to since the weak are always
driven by panic. Me, I cannot love
what I can’t conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing: are you the hawthorn tree,
always the same thing in the same place,
or are you the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up
a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,
and the next year, purple in the rose garden?
You must see it is useless to me,
this silence that promotes belief
you must be all things, the foxglove
and the hawthorn tree, the vulnerable rose
and tough daisy — I am left to think
you couldn’t possibly exist. Is this
what you mean me to think, does this explain
the silence of the morning?
-Louise Glück