That Badly Aching Someone

You want to tell him you’ll do anything –
frustration from fatigue (and the reverse) –
but you’ve exactly as much currency

in small change in your psyche’s purse
as you will need yourself: you cannot
spare a dime of it. The crime of it?

Perhaps there’s none. Someone’s aching
badly and his days have turned to night –
at least as far as your self-evidently

feeble sight can make it out – there’s
nothing for it but to gather up your
meddling soul and take it out and back

to where it knows, at least a little, what
to do. That badly aching someone may
have need of something, but it isn’t you.


.