What does it feel like to want someone who doesn't really care much about you? Season Two opens with two poems that ache in different ways — one quiet and communal, one raw and interior — and one common ache we've all carried at some point.
Vikram Seth's poem speaks to everyone lying awake missing someone. It doesn't try to fix anything. It simply says: you are not alone in this. The whole world shares your tears. There is something almost unbearably kind about that.
Then Camonghne Felix goes somewhere altogether different. Desire here is not quiet — it is overwhelming, ungainly, undignified. Her heart betrays her and she kneels to it. Wouldn't you call that a kind of theft?
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All You Who Sleep Tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hands to left or right,
And emptiness above —
Know that you aren't alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
My heart is the son of my body and it wants you.
Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bath
for the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.
It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn't you call that
a kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspoken
language, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:
through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,
me and all your untouched desires gathering. At night
every bell is your voice ringing my name. I am already
willingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touch
the clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fated
to be the lover who begs?
Camonghne Felix · American Poetry Review, Vol. 51, No. 05, 2022