Turn not towards me

Turn not towards me lest I turn to you:
Stretch not your hands towards your harm and me
Lest, waking, you should feel the need I do
To offer loves' proposterous guarantee
That the stars watch us, that there are no poor
No boyish weakness justifying scorn,
To cancel off from the forgotten score
The foiled caresses from which thought was born.

Yes, sleep:how easily may we do good
To those we have no wish to see again;
Love knows he argues with himself in vain,
He means to do no mischief but he would
Love would content us: that is untrue.
Turn not towards me, lest I turn to you.

W.H.Auden 1933