Synopsis These poems of longing and despair evoke the paradox of desire. The loved one is at once present in all spheres of the poet’s existence and still cruelly absent, close at hand and yet unattainable, an object of longing and yet a cause for despair. It is this paradox which gives rise to language and to poetry; it is their origin, but also an indication of their inadequacy, for language and poetry are signs not of the fulness of presence but of absence and loss.