These are the rules of the game:
You may say what you like
provided it is not serious.
You may say something serious
if your tone is flippant.
You may say something flippant
in a serious tone.
You may even say something serious
in a serious tone,
so long as you exaggerate just enough
to show that you do not mean it,
or to imply that you would mean it if ....
(without supplying the condition,
even in your own mind).
If you mean what you say
you must not let anyone know that you mean it.
If you say something you mean,
and if it becomes known that you mean it,
it is no longer the same game.
It may not even be a game at all.

But did you mean it?
did you? like that, I mean,
did you really mean it?
What you said was nothing,
really nothing at all,
unless you meant it.
It's just that ever since then
there is a hollow inside me.
You can fill it so easily.
Tell me you didn't mean to hurt,
but only if you mean it.

Words have power.
We all know this.

Verbs have power
because without verbs
we can neither laugh nor cry,
neither run nor walk;
we cannot breathe,
nor even be,
without a verb.
A noun too has power
because with it we have, in a sense,
mastery of the object, the person, or the feeling
that we name.
Even an adjective has power,
for it qualifies the noun,
fleshes it out,
makes it more our possession.
A conjunction,
small, insignificant,
you might think
without power,
but ....

All words have power.
We know this,
or we would not be writing poetry.

Shall these trees stand forever?
And the fields,
brown, green, gold, according to the season,
shall they remain?

But the hills,
the hills, they shall be there.
Always?
No, not even those.

What then shall be left of them?
Only the fact of their having been.
And when you are gone
and I am no longer here,
we too shall have been,
and nothing can be quite the same again.