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He Would Tell You (poem)

By Marc Levy

Here in the secret chambers
Of my darkest heart are things
I will never tell:
Here is oily blood and brittle bone;
Here are clotted lips, frothy lungs,
Decomposed and muted tongues;
Here twisted cloth lays strangely stiff
In a powdery triptych pit,
Where a dumbstruck man and wife
Lock quicklime arms round their
Dream-face child; here,
Past the graveyard's fragrant stones,
Memory's nightmare head will not lay prone,
Its battlefields etched on a red brocade
Inlaid with a crown of skull and bones.
Yes, here in the busy chambers of my
Heart are things I will never tell,
Though I swear we did not mutilate,
Only boobytrapped or ransacked;
Did not take human souvenirs.
No, we did not do that.
So, though I nearly did,
Let me never tell you
Things you cannot know;
Let me never tell you
Things that won't let go.

—Marc Levy