Anything For Me

Formal verse is always more fun, if more maddening, than free verse. This one’s a little unconventional but still has form: ABBCDEED, AFFCGHHG IIAAA

Anything For Me

You once said you’d do anything for me;
I hope with all my heart it isn’t true.
I trust that there are things you would not do
for me or anyone, that you would never
commit yourself to some ignoble course:
betray a friend, tell a selfish lie,
threaten or coerce, wink a lazy eye
at cruelty, resort to fraud or force.

If you have an essence, it’s integrity:
you seem ambitious only to be good.
Your antique New England rectitude
is, of many things in you I treasure,
perhaps the most essential. So if I
asked you for your love of me to break
your word, to dull your conscience for my sake,
and you acceded — love would start to die.

Always supposing I could fall so low,
I trust and hope that you would tell me No —
and by refusing show yourself to be
a truer love than one who would agree
to — or to do — anything for me.

— GPL 2008 D. A. Clarke