Auden

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

that for all they care, I can go to hell.

But on earth, indifference is the least

we have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

with a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be

let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

of stars that do not give a damn

I cannot, now I see them say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die

I'd learn to look at an empty sky,

And feel it's total dark sublime

though that might take me a little time.

W.H. Auden was a British poet in the early 1900's. I adopted this one as a possible motto for a little while, but there's something about it that really seems unfinished. Not the poem itself, maybe, but the idea behind it.