At first, the poem sounds like a love declaration, but it quickly turns into something much older and less personal. Speaking to a woman he desires, the speaker says that if he loves and chooses her, words hardly matter. What he feels is not just private emotion but a force rooted in the body — under her breasts and womb he hears the “call of the ages,” the voices of ancestors, and an urge older than shame, hate, or love itself. This want, he says, is what builds the world.
The mood is intense, almost awed, yet strangely impersonal. Instead of focusing on the beloved’s unique personality, the speaker is overwhelmed by the primal, inherited drive that draws humans together. Love here feels less like a choice or a romance and more like a vast, ancient instinct moving through the body. It is both powerful and a little unsettling, because it reminds us how much of desire belongs to forces far older than the individual.