If You Must Love Me Poem by RIC BASTASA

if you must love me
and love me truly as you can be
a lover of all the seasons
as a river always moves
flowing to the sea
or as the night comes
after the day
or the rain after
a sunny day

so must you love
Narcissus and Philander
and Zeus and
Sisyphus

& the cute child who was
true enough to tell the people
in the parade
that the gullible emperor
has no clothes..

you must learn to laugh
and cry and scream and curse
and too be silent
and patient

you must both be a rock
and river bank
a cliff and the shore
the desert and
the mud

if you must love me
and love me truly as what you can ever be...