84 An Artist's Temperament

She will want you to leave her.

She glories in the pining, the chasing,

Then the loss, the suffering, all the while:

The state of non-being is all the more beautiful to her.

They say to be in love with an artist is to be immortal;

But that immortality is a perpetual estrangement,

A constant demarcation of what you are

And what You are as an ideal to be written about.

She will say, “I like you better when you are not around;

I like you when I think about you,

When I dream about you,

But not when I open my eyes

To find you there.”