You Have Never Loved Me Poem by Tamir Greenberg

You never have loved me. No.
Not in the morning kiss on the beach
And not in the warmth of a tumbled bed.
What to me was the entire sea, with its terrible depths,
Its waves and its ships – for you was just a ripple.

I was the place, you were the passing moment.
I wished for unity of time and space,
You were the constant birth.
I knew that in a place where no time is –
There is no expectation either.
Dulled and fossilized it will lie still,
Not thirsting for grace, not sapped with disillusion,
But time without a place – where will it flow? For what?
Can it stream in a vacuum? And whom will it delight?

You have never loved me. No.
Not in a slick lie, or in a smile that promised much,
And very much you have not loved me in the craving
That still springs abundant from your body!
Would I sin if I wished that you too were scratched?
That my existence made dark bleeding flow from your soul?
Let not the sand complain of the one whose tread
Corroded his grains into a bitter stone,
But how shall it be silent if not even a tiny hollow
Was etched in the heel of the passerby?
Dry and crumbling he will gaze at the horizon,
A border no man has ever crossed,
And this stone, that was all bumps and pustules
Will suddenly appear to him precious.