A More Powerful Love

No longer will I cook for you
or sit beside you.
You will never call me again from overseas
or look into my face.
Nor will wisdom flame
in the familiar fireplace of conversation.
Nor will the ship moor to
the dock it has known for 20 years.
I can come to you as anxiety
when you're too lethargic, lax,
and the time has come to act.
I can come to you as loneliness
to wake you to your selfishness,
to wake you to the fact
generosity may burn the brighter.
Where once I fed and clothed the child,
made the bed and cleaned the room of the child,
I can now illuminate your solitude,
weave the melodies of circumstance
pleasing or grating, deepening your art,
be the silence savoured of a wanderer
who has found a home without stone or walls.
Sometimes, no friends around, you'll pine.
Sometimes, your friends will seem far away,
distance smelling of a different sphere,
and you'll doubt yourself, you may wonder
whether you're going mad and you've deserved
the misfortune, fierce forces pulling you back
into old courses. Like a tough teacher
who loves a student, I'll show you
what you would not have wished upon yourself.
I may obstruct, frustrate, and terrify you -
but, love, I'll be your liberation too.