In this moment I love you.
Not in secret - out there too.
Not after nor before, I burn in your gaze so.
I cry or laugh in view And in this moment I love you
In the past - I don’t need it. In the future I don’t know.

To say "I loved" in the past
Is sadder than being dead.
Tenderness takes away my wings and makes me ill,
Though the master poet said:
"Oh yes I loved you, and such love is still..."1

People talk of things like this abandoned, and decayed -
There is pity in this and condescension too,
Like for a once great king pulled down from above.
There is regret for what has passed away,
Aspiration, where swiftness to move on falls from view.
And a frail distrust of saying "I love you."

I love you in this moment
Without measure, without loss
My time for love is now, won’t slit my wrists now
For the duration, continuation, this moment
I do not live in the past. And the future? Not obsessed now.

I’ll wade a river or swim
With weights on every limb
To reach you any time - behead me if you choose!
But don’t ever make me - don’t begin -
Add "will" or "forever more" to a simple "I love you"

Yes, there’s bitterness in this "will" - it’s a mole,
A forged signature, a little wormhole
A passage for backing out, in case,
An invisible poison at the bottom of the glass
And a slap in the face to the present
The doubt that "I love you" in this moment.

I am watching a French dream -
So many tenses, it seems.
Where in the future, it’s not so; in the past, it’s not the same.
I’m nailed on to the post, a pillory of shame;
I’m summoned to the brink, the language barrier game.

The language’s distress
Is no place to be - a mess
But we will look for a way out, we will, the two of us.
I love you in complex tenses -
In the future perfect and the past continuous.