"For what you do,/ somehow, .../ to my mind with just your voice, so that/ everything I once was sure of seems wrong"

from “No Word, No Sign” by Aaron Kunin

There’s no word for you. There’s no word

for what you do to me. For what you do,

somehow, and you don’t know you do it,

to my mind with just your voice, so that

everything I once was sure of seems wrong;

for what you do to my way of seeing,

so that I start to doubt my own eyes if

what my eyes report isn’t just like what

I hear you say; and for what you do to

my voice to keep it from talking, to keep down

every word somewhere where I can’t remember

it: for this, there’s no word. To me

you’re like a machine without a purpose,

whose purpose is to cast doubt on every

idea that my mind is thinking, and

the end of every idea is you.