"If I Could Tell You" is a poem by W. H. Auden, written in 1940 as a villanelle—a poetic form with a repeating rhyme and refrain pattern.

It’s often read as a meditation on time, uncertainty, and the inability to fully know or control the future. The repeated lines “Time will say nothing but I told you so” and “If I could tell you, I would let you know” create a tension between a longing for certainty and the inevitability of ambiguity in life.