If equal affection cannot be

I was maybe twelve, thirteen years old when I first came across W. H. Auden's poem "The more loving one" and I fell in love with it instantly. Since then it is one of my favourite poems and if I was considering having a tattoo one day (which I'm not) it would probably be a verse from it. Which one I don't know. Being so young when first reading it I obviously could not understand it that well. Neither I experienced love up to that point, nor a broken heart, longing, desire... 

As I was getting older, and returned to this little poem years after, it was a different poem in front of me. In particular times I lived it and got the feeling Auden had written it for me. With only one objection: I don't want to be the more loving one anymore. 

“Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell, 

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast. 

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return? 

If equal affection cannot be, 

Let the more loving one be me. 

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.“

(W. H. Auden - The More Loving One)

(Edvard Munch - The lonely ones)

Equal Affection

I tried to solve countless equations

Yet my want for you is uncountable.

I failed with science and calculations

To make my heart sustainable.

Answer I longed for I never found

Neither on tongue, nor in your eyes,

Found myself falling from the cloud,

On the day you sang your goodbyes.

I traded the pleasure and joyfulness

For the final movement of the ninth.

In tentative reply to loneliness

I chose to be my largest crowd.

Walls are higher, stairs are steeper,

Wild is path I have to go through.

With every breath I dive deeper,

Insatiable is my desire for you.

If equal affection cannot be true,

I wish the more loving one was you.