My Funny Valentine

This poem began as a paean to your virtues,
A hymn to your body, brain, and being.
Sparkling images, each coolly reflecting your light,
every phrase and beat a gem your figure had cut.

But by the second stanza something had gone wrong.
The words lay crabbed and stricken on the page,
my thoughts confused, my metaphors limping along,
the whole thing lurching toward disaster.

When suddenly a sly tercet made a virtue of necessity,
my words' impotence became a tribute to your ineffable grace,
and my shortcomings served only to set off your perfection.

But now, at the end, I see irony cannot do you right,
and my words, as before, cannot utter your name,
not even in failure, not even in absence, not even.