riddles

I feel like I have lost a friend this past week - in misunderstanding? I'm not sure. The hardest part is that I know I'm somehow supposed to understand because it's the very thing I would expect as well, but I missed a cue somewhere along the way. And if I ask for a hint now, it feels like a failure because I should know. I should know, but silence is as confusing as the words.

So I'm sorry - for what I have said or haven't said that seems, at least on my end, to have created an even greater distance. If I am right, then I've been dishonest. If I am wrong, I have only made the situation worse. The best solution would be to say nothing, but I thought you knew me a little better than that.

Let us go then, you and I,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
.
.
.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare? and, "Do I dare?"
.
.
.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For deicions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have know them all already, known them all -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
.
.
.
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
.
.
.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
to have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say, "I am Lazarus, come form the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor -
And this, and so much more? -
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if the magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on the screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window should say:
"That is not it al all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

If there is one thing to know then, it is that I've worked this riddle before - and I should have learned a lesson. So I'll borrow someone else's words again because my own seem to get me in so much trouble.