If I could write a poem to express my love for you,
It would have to be epic—even Homeric
Filled with metaphors of striking beauty
Renowned for the intensity of its passion

It would have to tell how limitless is my love:
How timeless, how eternal, how extravagant.
It would have to encompass all things visible and invisible,
All thought, feeling, perception, and intuition.

It would have to be bright with the cheer of present bliss
And dark with the fear of potential loss.
It's lines would have to move to the rhythms of sex
And come to rest in domestic complacency.

It would be a common ballad: earthy and bawdy
And a soaring aria: sophisticated and refined
It would be sensible and lucid as a dictionary
And abstruse and digressive as Tristram Shandy

My poem would be so full of contradictions
That it could not be begun and, once begun,
So full of splendor and glory and so sublime
It must never end.