The Professor Admits Defeat and Begs for a Sign

The world has broken me completely down.

I don't mean that I've been a torture victim
And that I'd say the things you want to hear--
It's more like someone really understands
Interrogation and has worked on me
Until the easiest thing is not to lie.
Here's part of my confession, just for you.
This is the first time I've really written
To you. Those other things, I just adapted,
Because they fit, written before I knew you,
Though I did mean them, when I read them to you.
Ok, here goes—this is the undiluted jazz:
I realized tonight, I just can't do it,
The stuff I know I ought to do to get you.
If I blurt out a compliment or two,
Realize I have an ocean of them waiting
That you will never hear, and that I know
That flattery will never get me anywhere.
I just don't have the heart to do the other,
To bust you up, to run you down, to tease you
Until you start to doubt yourself a little bit.
I understand that that is how it works,
That that is how I might get your attention,
That I should undermine your self esteem a little
And make you work for grudging admiration.
And that would be true even if you're normal.
But I don't have the heart to do it. Sorry.
I know that you're expecting to get hurt,
Not just a broken heart but broken bones,
And that no man can say he's an exception,
That it could never happen, never bruise you,
Never get carried away too much to notice.
I do believe that such won't ever happen,
And I won't tempt you with another version
Of that same fear. And I will not extract you,
Which I perhaps could do, to live in my world,
To breathe the sizzling, corrosive air,
Naked as a snail without its shell,
Exposed to the ideas that radiate
Out of the past and all the deadly futures
That loom before our tragic little species,
So clever, having lived through changing weather,
That now we've upped the ante, pushing the planet
Toward violent extremes we've never lived through.
I know you understand how we're connected,
Not just how everyone in the world is,
But how these two, just you and I, are now.
It started happening when our eyes met.
You felt it. So did I. We saw each other
Feeling the pull of it, the ratchet forward.
And now we're at this point, or maybe moving,
Maybe together, maybe falling apart,
And desperately reaching for what's lost.
I saw it in your eyes. You may not know
Just what it is that you're connected to,
What I involve. No more than I know you,
Or what the fact that we could be together
May really mean. But I will not cross swords
Or words with other men before I know
That you have stepped toward me as I toward you.
I will not treat you as if you were mine
Unless you want me to. But I am yours
For the taking, abject as a ripe fig.
Go ahead and eat me: I'm completely organic,
Fresh, sweet and full of Vitamin B12.
I am, it seems, exactly what you need,
Though you are probably all that I can handle.
I don't know how long you can wait to choose.
But I'm not threatening to force your choice,
But this could all evaporate, disperse
Into the quantum turbulence that made it.
In fact, I am not even offering
My heart. You have what's left of it already.
It's been used hard, but it still wants to serve.
It's like a tired old computer program
That beat the world's champions at chess.
It's always found a way to win before
And seemed to have that supreme confidence,
But then again, I never had met you.
Love's promises are never certainties—
Though true, they are like unprovable theorems,
Like numbers infinite, uncountable,
Like worlds of limpid green and blue
That must exist, we feel, beyond our sight.
They are not harbingers so much as hopes.
The electricity and fire between us,
Though it could tear this universe apart,
Is much too wild for any guarantees.