When We Talk of Love

If we subdivide time into three equal parts

The distances covered (given by the areas)

Are in the ratio one-three-five.

Oh! So we’re taking off our masks, are we,

And we see ourselves, our many faces

As if for the first time, for the first time,

Really, and the clock tick-tick-ticks above our heads.

The terms latitude and longitude used

Are in a general sense equivalent to our ordinate

And absicissa, and the graphical representation

Is akin to our analytic geometry.

I will ask you only one more time to lend me

Your eyes. I can change what you see.

It’s wonderful to admire ourselves

With complete and naked candor.

Crying into our elbows will get us nowhere.

Moreover, this theory was chiefly interested in

The area under the curve. Hence, it is not

Very likely that it saw the other half

Of the fundamental principle of analytic geometry.

So, what is it? What in the hell are you talking about?

That every plane curve can be represented,

With respect to a coordinate system,

As a function of one variable.

One variable? Are you kidding me?

Way back then, when time pretended to stand

By us, we wrote our bloody names with a knife

Everywhere we took a piss, 
Against the beech tree,

On the belly of a cow, 
On all the books in the high school library

(Remember when we were library aids?), 
In the farthest lofts of our fathers' barns, 
On all our sisters' horse statues,

On the forehead of all the bullies who learned

They could get dinner with us—
But we would get a vicious lunch.

We wrote our names on the very face 
Of the television screen we used to call the sun.

We licked the blade when we were done.