Untitled (#nothing)

I bear a nearness I am not allowed,

A warmth that comes with no right to remain;

It moves through breath—unbidden and unbowed—

And turns each hour to its returning pain.

I do not claim you—God forbid I should;

For love that claims would falsify this fire:

It is enough that once it understood

A closeness nothing later can retire.

O cruel exactness—felt, yet not to hold;

O lucid wound, that will not blur or dim;

The present narrows round what I'm told

By what we were—now edged, yet never thin.

So let me stand where wanting must not move:

Alive with what I may not turn to love.