Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
I copied but did not send it.
I thought a phone call, maybe, but knew
The whirlpool words in my own mouth
Would give it all away.
There is no pressure I have not imagined:
Your teeth on my throat,
Your hair in my hand,
Your eyes on my salted lips. All these
Tide to and from my sleeping shores like trains.
And, too, the gravity
Of my own crumbling, wet face, the heft
Of your apology.
(Once you wrote me a confession, a treatise on starry unknowns.
Wrote it out in one long night,
Found it too true and threw
The whole thing away.
I know this because you told me.)
Original poem by W. H. Auden
Photograph by flickr user tomo.1981
Inspiration by you
