What is love, and what is love not;
I cannot feel love any more,
I am asleep in my sick conscience,
I feel dead when it can but breathe.
What is a heart, what is it not;
When my sight is but bathed in pain,
In grief, for no more love hath recognised me;
Nor bribed me for the sake of lust.
What is poetry, and what are words;
For I am not seen within their worlds,
What hath caused me to be so weak,
What hath now ceased to be my love.
What is sane, and what is sane not;
For I hath had my story short,
I am insane in a place I cannot see,
Where my steps cannot place their whereabouts.
Ah, I cannot even feel the air;
My lungs are stuck in such unwavering heat,
My heart is devoid of its past midnight bliss;
I am longing for what used to be me again.
Ah, I cannot even feel such love;
There raised a longing for my lost poetry,
All is not settled and I feel but angry,
I cannot smell and taste the summer rose.
Ah, I am now blind to such delight;
The delight that once carried me to moonlight,
And the butterflies that hummed in my dreams
That I saw them live as I writ.
Ah, I am now blind to such joy!
I cannot mime the animated old song,
For all is greed here—and tainted by greed,
For speed is prime, and conscience is vain.
Ah, I feel weary too much now!
For tomorrows are heavy, and lights are violent,
For on the roads are but violent tumults,
And all the cheeky hot breeze they raise,
I cannot live, nor do I see in such rage.
Ah, I feel savage in too many ways!
The green gardens stay but to mock me,
They are a low illusion to my presence,
An image too unreal to reveal my fate.
Ah, I feel distorted in my imagination;
Even my universe cannot keep its way now,
And I cannot feel my feet steady,
Its hysteria spilling all over me.
Ah, I cannot but feel thirsty;
The sun is too bright that I cannot see,
The moon is too vague that I cannot feel,
My destiny lay too briefly in my arms.
Ah, I cannot feel comforted, no more;
For none in t’eir slumbers shalt hear my word,
They are too busy with their talk, and legs,
Aptly storming about with ugly chores.
Ah, I cannot see in such dry moonlight;
I hath not a soul to fight, but read—
And none bears but a piece of word about me,
With too much to say, too many tongues to feed.
Ah, I cannot but remember the forgot;
To endear to thee like my arms did,
To read and lay about the upcoming moors,
To feel the urge to lay still, like an awed child.
Ah, I cannot but remember my dreams;
The ones so wild that the vibrant remain,
A remembrance of which shalt become my character,
And my character thus, shalt stand not in vain.
Ah, I cannot but long for my shore;
A long shore so cold like that in England,
When ‘tis a shore not, aye, but a solitude,
One I am not to find in such hearts unlike mine.
Ah, I cannot but long for my old oak;
In Coventry, that I saw by pitiful daylight,
But oft’ smiled to me during the hazy winter,
Hanging to me like my dear sweet old friend.
Ah, and I cannot help but writ about thee;
And sing the same cheerful song again,
A song of innocence and lethal youth,
That my midnight sleeps in colours again.
Ah, I cannot but miss that wry smile;
That such crooked lips shalt by satiated by none else,
That such mirth is but to lie within thee alone,
That such joy is not present in thy absence.
Ah, so I cannot but long for thee again;
My moonlit light and twilight friend,
My dark poetry as winter began,
I felt it light on my naked hands.
Ah, so I cannot but feel thee here;
On whom are all my guts and verdant desire,
Whom hath I sweetly, and purely loved,
That I hath loved with unknown bareness, and chastity.
Ah, so I cannot but miss t’at season of thine;
Thy blooming cheeks and lush lavenders,
Those we strolled by in the vigilant autumn,
The ones that would soon die, and wake in a daze.
Ah, I cannot but rest in my dreams again;
My slumbers are now about yon blue fall,
Too sophisticated for a sophomore like me,
In that image too, thou wouldst be by my side.
Ah, I cannot but resent the sun once more;
But it understands not my resenting,
Like a joyless bud it shimmers no joy,
Like every summer that is void of love.
Ah, I cannot but resent its tears;
For such gurgling tears I am not made of,
I am a being of my immortal poetry,
And so my youthful joy too is eternal.
Ah, I cannot but favour thee again;
I feel too chaste for the absent-minded sun,
Too spirited for its imbecile heat,
Too womanly for its sordid jubilee.
Ah, I cannot but resort to thee once more;
I feel too wasted by the impatient wind,
Horrendous and frivolous in its wake,
Hot and sultry to my conscience.
Ah, so I cannot but seek my sweet fall again;
For t’is heat is too godless to share,
For a youthful maiden like me,
All is blind to me, for I cannot stay awake.
Ah, I cannot but seek my same old love;
My solitude is rigid and tough,
Fake in its meridian and lame singing,
And its heated leaves smelling sour.
Ah, I cannot but yearn for my rhymes;
Filled in fall with sweet grapes and thyme,
I used to write by the old lime tree,
The ice and cold washing all over me.
Ah, I cannot but long for long writ;
By the golden brass and old riverbanks,
Where all goes dark and becomes dusk too soon,
When clean, free air but satiates my mouth.
Ah, I can but feel such love now, and longer;
There exist too many tales to tell,
My heart hath fallen to Coventry’s midnight grass,
And with its existence, cometh again the image of thee.
Ah, I cannot but tame such love, no more;
To spend every word at the same old pace,
Bear my flavour in darkness and haze,
Writ damp poetry by the bashful chest.