First, get acquainted his words,
no touch, my grandmother
might have said, generic wisdom
in a particular voice, no one want
woman too easy to love.
But she never lived in English; her time

came long before Nixon and the time
in my life when any such words
would have weight. Which is OK. I loved,
sometimes preferred, to dream up the grandmother
I couldn’t meet. So the day you said you wanted
me, I knew the score. Conventional wisdom

on male desire is barely even wisdom –
everyone knows it – but you’d timed
it well, I didn’t love you either, and wanted
you, too. And you used the right words,
sweet ones my composite grandmother
would have approved; you didn’t say love

but planned around my plans, spoke as if in love,
locked in the first-person plural. Wisdom
could make allowances. Grandmothers
mean to snare a man till the end of time,
and I knew from your take on the printed word
that you-till-the-end-of-time was not what I wanted,

but another thing I never wanted
was a cynical absence of love,
so I let myself savor your words,
cradled in a future tense, benevolent wisdom
nestled in platitudes, and in our brief time
of no touch, allowed the mental grandmother

to give you thumb up. The real grandmother—
who knows what she would have wanted?
Maybe she would’ve said, This time
different; for this man, first-sight love;
maybe she abhorred the limits of ancient wisdom
on female joy. So I took you at your word.

Now I’m putting words in my grandmother’s
mouth again, vessels for wisdom that’s wanting:
Tell bad man, I will not love you long time.