Were we not then, before we were

Made up in the one mind,

As if tied to uneasy beds, to stir

And argue with ourselves? As heretics,

Or disbelievers in religion find

A hundred reasons, each of a new kind,

Against the thing at which love sticks;

And all their subtly-shifting tricks

Were summed up if they said ‘It is not true’:

So half-aware of some adultery,

Even before we came

To be contracted one to the other, we

Half-loved, and thought love lame.

I in my madness found a way to be

Chimerical yet catastrophic; she

Was lost in an unending dream of me.

For I know now how she

Was, long before I knew

Her: as she recreates all things for me,

We make up all between us, and the skies

Are living in us, all we say or do

Marries them to the world, and through us two

Like needles in a haystack, and our eyes,

Such reasons and realities

Come singing like a fire, the truth comes true.

We are like a pair of dice that the soul throws

In this two-handed game—

Rattles the little box where the luck grows;

And it is all the same

Whether a six by six or six by four

Lies, or a five by two, or three, or more:

We add that to this, this to that, and score.