Sway with Me
Sway with me, everything sad — madmen in stone houses without doors, lepers steaming love and song, frogs trying to figure the sky; sway with me, sad things — fingers split on a forge, old age like breakfast shell, used books, used people, used flowers, used love. I need you, I need you, I need you: it has run away like a horse or a dog, dead or lost or unforgiving.
Sway with Me - meaning Summary
Tenderness Amid Decay
The speaker invites a companion to move through shared sorrow, pairing raw, worn images—madmen, lepers, used objects—with a weary tenderness. The poem balances bleak catalogues of decay and loss with a plain, urgent confession of need. Its final section shifts from collective scene-setting to a personal absence: the beloved is gone, elusive or dead, leaving the speaker exposed and dependent amid everyday ruin.
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