And you're the kind of girl I like, because you're empty and I'm empty.

Witch-Wife
Edna St. Vincent Millay

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

Surrealism is a weakness of mine, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my favorite non-lyric poets, has that in spades. Instead of choosing a more famous poem from Millay, I went with something a little more off the beaten path, although I think Witch Wife stands amongst her best. Straddling the delicate lines between whimsy ("She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, and her mouth on a valentine" - this line alone is a psychosexual, vaguely disturbing-in-a-Lolita way sort of construction begging to be broken down through analysis), vulnerability, and Knocking on Heaven's Door-type defeatism, Millay says a lot with so little. The entire poem is only three stanzas, and it seems like each chunk represents a different, wholly seperate emotion: the first is whimsical, the second is defeatist but still moderately hopeful (the author's praises are unfaltering even here), and the third is plaintive numbness upon realizing the Witch Wife could never give herself to the author completely.