The poem
Light is more important than the lantern, The poem more important than the notebook, And the kiss more important than the lips. My letters to you Are greater and more important than both of us. The are the only documents Where people will discover Your beauty And my madness.
The first sentence seems to set up a dichotomy between experience and the technology or means by which it is produced, saying that the first is more important than the second. This judgement looks as if it is reversed in the second sentence where the poet's letters to his lover are seen as more important than the lives they live. Unlike the first dichotomy, however, which is concerned with means and ends, this second sentence deals with experience and its subsequent record, from which others may perhaps learn and which is perhaps eternal. I think there is an uneasy relationship between these two similar but distinct dichotomies that makes for a thought provoking but perhaps confused poem.