Finding your suitable match must be
something like finding happiness—

an out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye
kind of thing, killed

if you try too hard
at all. It must be, because

I’ve killed a few myself,
trying so hard I’ve often died.

Then those little deaths gather
for a little convention

over the three-day weekend, saluting
the limpid white flag you carry

in the Parade of Failures and teasing
graveside toasts to your attempts.

All you wanted was reunion,
your Aristophanic better half,

and to release the pressure
on your own weary one,

weary, it turns out, from trying.
If it had only known not to try

till it always died
it may have found its wholeness

in a repose supposedly
unsupposed to be noticed.

– D. R. James