I call up words that he may write them down.
My falling into labour gives him birth.
My sorrows are not sorrows till he weeps.
I learn from him as much as he from me
Who is my chosen and my tool in time.
I am dumb: my burden is not like another.
My lineaments are hid from him who knows me.
Great is my Earth with undelivered words.
It is my dead, my dead, that sing to him
This ancient moment; and their voice is he.
Born into time of love’s perceptions, he
Is not of time. The acts of time to him
Are marginal. From the first hour he knows me
Until the last, he shall divine my words.
In his own solitude he hears another.
I make demands of him more than another.
He sets himself a labour built of words
Which, through my lips, brings sudden joy to him.
He has the illusion that at last he knows me.
When the toil ends, my confidant is he.
Vision makes wise at once. Why then must he
Wait through so many years before he knows me?
The bit is tempered to restrain his words
And make laborious all that’s dear to him.
So he remains himself and not another.
Why is he slow to praise me when another
Falls at my feet? What conscience moves in him
To make a stubborn stand before he knows me?
It is reluctance that resolves his words.
I have been cursed, indeed, by such as he.
Yet, though a school invoke me, it is he
I choose, for opposition gives those words
Their strength; and there is none more near to him
In thought. It is by conflict that he knows me
And serves me in my way and not another.
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