“What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged
suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long
at the lonely moon.[…]
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow
—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with
dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic
and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my
heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger,
with defeat.

from “Two English Poems”