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You love to see the bear inside the zoo—

you LOVE to see the bear there. That is clear.

But, tell me, if his care were up to you,

how soon the signs of neglect would appear?

You have no skills for caring for the bear,

and would you blame him if he swiped at you?

Even if he knew very well your care,

would you hate him if e’er he, hungry, grew?

I’d like to think you wouldn’t. Yet I muse,

for I have seen your hate grow wild for one

who needed love when you had a short fuse,

and lost it when his need ruined your fun.

You think you love the bear, but only spied

behind the glass, well on its outer-side.

~~~

I sang it well indeed today, quite well indeed sang I,

the song you taught so well to me, the one that made you sigh,

that ever years have sung to me that I have sung right back,

to what I have so longed to see, and what I still yet lack.

I sang to no-one, though, as no-one as the way you are—

the way you leave me always, though you are not very far,

to a full hall of nothing but the echoes of the wall,

where I could hear you hearing, though you weren’t in the hall.

How hear you that song? Is that the last memory you hold,

of me, when we two studied when our hearts were not yet cold?

It is one of my best, when you last listened to that song,

that now I sing to empty halls, your ghosts the only throng.

One day someone will hear it, and the words will be for her;

but now they are for you. And for you only do they stir.