—golden shovel on Geoffrey Hill’s “Ovid in the Third Reich”

We’re cornered here together. I
have both legs in your lap; you have
my heart to hold, and all the rest. What we’ve learned
of love can’t fill even this one
small room. Here’s the thing:

If either of us starts singing, history will not
hear. It won’t tell what we sought to
say, nor found, won’t register the look
you give me as the passenger jet goes down.