Offering And Rebuff
I could love you as dry roots love rain. I could hold you as branches in the wind brandish petals. Forgive me for speaking so soon. Let your heart look on white sea spray and be lonely. Love is a fool star. You and a ring of stars may mention my name and then forget me. Love is a fool star.
Sandburg was 80 when he wrote this. Apparently he was seized with a sudden, silent passion for a young girl who, attending one of his pubic appearances, said she liked his poetry, even when she couldn't quite understand it. He went home and wrote this poem. As the proverb runs (I think translated from French), "The tragedy of old age is not that we are old, -- but that we are yet young."