Billet-doux
Here is the magniloquent truth - His twelve bright brass bands Diverted down mouseholes - Walking the town with his head high And naked as his breath. I have looked far enough If now I have found one who does Not - hold that 'not' to the light -, When I walk about in my blood and the air Beside her, sweeten smiles, peep, cough, Who sees straight through bogeyman, The crammed cafés, the ten thousand Books packed end to end, even my gross bulk, To the firey star coming for the eye itself, And while she can grabs of them what she can. Love you I do not say I do or might either. I come to you enforcedly - Love's a spoiled appetite for some delicacy - I am driven to your bed and four walls From bottomlessly breaking night - If, dispropertied as I am By the constellations staring me to less Than what cold, rain and wind neglect, I do not hold you closer and harder than love By a desperation, show me no home.
Billet-doux - meaning Summary
Love as Desperate Shelter
The poem presents love not as a tender choice or a conventional declaration, but as an urgent refuge against isolation. The speaker mocks romantic language and feels diminished by a vast, indifferent universe. Yet he values a woman who can see beyond social clutter and his own physical presence. His desire to hold her comes from desperation: without this closeness, he feels he has no shelter or home.
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