Without Explanation Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

You came like rain before the clouds had formed,
And stayed like roots beneath a field unstormed.
I thought each love must first explain its claim,
Each wound require a language, each scar a name.

But you read nothing I was forced to say;
You found me where my explanations lay.
You did not ask the darkness where I'd been,
You simply lit a room and called me in.

Now years have taught me what the years erase:
The hand-built monuments of time lose face.
The names I carved grow smaller in the stone;
Even the things I made will leave me alone.

So who am I when all I've built is dust
When every borrowed title breaks its trust?
Perhaps I am the breath no record keeps,
The little light that love alone still sees.

And when my name has vanished from the air,
If nothing I have gathered follows there,
Let this remain when everything is through:
I needed no explanation to be loved by you.