Is

 

Even if I tell you, tell you plainly,

        in the simplest words,

You will not get it.

 

Even if you tell it back to me in new words you picked from the fruit-heavy branches of your word tree so that I understand my own meaning as though you were giving it new to me

You will not have it.

 

But it will sit with you when you lie trembling in your sweat-soaked bed.

It will hold your hand and lay a compress on your fevered head.

And when the fever breaks, many many years from now,

When my voice and name have been composted past shadow,

You will repeat these words again (or others like them) like a prayer, slowly, to yourself

as you strain your thighs to the mattress edge

and shift your weight

and stand up shaking on the cold hard floor.

Then you'll have it; you’ll have got it, you will know.