The problem with the word bittersweet
Is that it puts the bitter first. A better word
Might find a way to stress a sweet intensity
Hinting at a taste, a tincture of melancholy,
Not at all bitter, not nostalgic, not sorrowful,
But with an ache, the weight of difference,
Of memory. There’s such a word. Always
There’s a word for it, if not in this language,
Then spoken somewhere. If a human has felt
A particular experience, another has already
Named it, although maybe now the name
Is lost. Anyway, it’s not the single name
That matters, but all the other words used
To define the name. They tell us whether
This name captures the complicated sense
We wanted to explain, just so, just exactly,
And then gradually we come to use the one
Name as a substitute for the whole packet
We first dragged out to specify how we felt
That time we came around the sharp curve
And saw the beloved lake again, that time
We turned into the densely spindled woods
With the thick moss and the barred light
And the seeping rivulets, that time we felt
All the joy of return, all the rush of other
Times, because time is always other
And place is just the echo of the other
In the new, a recognition within the ongoing
Change that because something in this is
Unchanged, it must connect us to the gone.
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