55 Marriage poems

I’m not yet comfortable with the word, its short clean woosh that sounds like life. At dinner last night my single girls said in admonition, “It’s not wife-approved” about a friend’s upcoming trip. Their eyes rolled up and over and out their pretty young heads. Wife, why does it sound like a job? “I need a wife” the famous feminist wrote, “a wife that will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced if need be.” A word that could be made easily into maid. A wife that does, fixes soothes, honors, obeys, Housewife, fishwife, bad wife, good wife, what’s the word for someone who stares long into the morning, unable to even fix tea some days, the kettle steaming over loud like a train whistle, she who cries in the mornings, she who tears a hole in the earth and cannot stop grieving, the one who wants to love you, but often isn’t good at even that, the one who doesn’t want to be diminished by how much she wants to be yours.

Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, Mere imitation of the inimitable: In heaven we have the real and true and sure. ’Tis there they neither marry nor are given In marriage but are as the angels: right, Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ To say that! Marriage-making for the earth, With gold so much,— birth, power, repute so much, Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these! Be as the angels rather, who, apart, Know themselves into one, are found at length Married, but marry never, no, nor give In marriage; they are man and wife at once When the true time is: here we have to wait Not so long neither! Could we by a wish Have what we will and get the future now, Would we wish aught done undone in the past? So, let him wait God’s instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i’ the dark to rise by. And I rise.

Misus and Mopsa hardly could agree, Striving about superiority. The text which says that man and wife are one, Was the chief argument they stood upon. She held they both one woman should become, He held both should be man, and both but one. So they contended daily, but the strife Could not be ended, till both were one wife.

You get over these constant storms and learn to be married all over again, every day. —Barry Hannah The foyer is hers because the kettle is hers as it was made for water and the water is hers because the sac that grew the baby was hers though the semen that made the sac was his like his boots are his and the tea that’s of the kettle after it enters his mouth is his unless it’s hers since it’s inside the kitchen that’s hers and therefore not his unless he’s simmering the Asian sauces that are his because they’re dense and knotty rather than milkish and paltry like everything else from the nation state of the motherland of the no-mercy child who won’t stop sucking and wanting and whining in the ear that is his although the child herself belongs somehow to the woman and thus its hunger is hers as is the bed and dresser and mirror and latch though the hammer naturally is his and the saw and lumber and back and muscle he suffered to build because he guessed he thought it would be good for something besides this house like a pestilence of people who weren’t his because nothing was his except the whirl he carried in his belly of the mix-up of loving her in the first place like being sucked into a burrow of lava embers and putting your tongue to it until it caught fire and all he could say was that the burn was his—this hole in the mouth— this fiasco of the woman bent now in the garden to smell the cilantro as though she didn’t know his head was split with hating her and loving her and hating her and loving her because she was an ache and a kink and somehow the furrow—the groove and the rut— and age and death and kiss and fuck and not-fuck and song and not-song and no it was not sweet though he’d go on and carry it since also—since mostly—it was.

Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River Are your words in the dark, Beloved.

Now that everything seems so persuasive you will go on changing      as always it has always been the case with you whether you knew it or not      ever since that morning in the swamp      that Sunday a sunless windy morning      when right in front of you      a fat hive dropped unbidden      out of a blackened tree a tupelo      and where it fell      the water was shallow      eighteen inches at most but in it      one hundred & fifty-six wasps drowned      so      no      you are not finished      your apprenticeship is not yet over you have fallen in love      inadvertently      you are the bride-to-be      and now      having dressed yourself in the gown      for practice you must stand before a mirror in the upper right-hand corner of which      all of a sudden      a courtroom will appear      the litigants judge & jury suspended there      in midair      a news bulletin      the reporter's face reflected from a portable television far across the room      the sound turned down the litigants looking tense      or bored the whole crew of them a little self-conscious      like characters who have just recently been conjured      though somewhat incompletely      by a staff of studio writers in Century City      California In a field off a Vermont road      later this week      you'll listen to a car ticking as it cools      the sound of the engine blending with the cicadas in tall bluegrass floating past      as in a dream then you will finger the veil & lift your mother & father long ago set aside in a folder for silences & song you'll waken      almost immediately reborn      you will have lifted the veil though of course      sooner or later      farther down the line      that stranger      the one with whom you spend so much time in your mind      talking      he will reveal he is your brother      and what will you have to say to him then      when as he must      he asks if you had allowed yourself to lead a happy life in spite of the fact your parents had not      what is it you will tell him what answer can you give?

The love we’ve defined for ourselves in privacy, in suffering, keeps both of us lonely as a fist, but does intimacy mean a happy ending? I’m afraid of marriage. Driving past them at night, the shadows on a drawn curtain hide terrible lives: a father stuck in a job, his daughter opening her blouse to strangers. And your hands, for example, like a warm liquid on my face don’t evaporate as you take them away. Nor are our betrayals silent, although we listen only in passing. We’re learning how to walk unlit streets, to see threats instead of trees, the right answer to a teenager opening his knife. The answer is yes. Always we couldn’t do otherwise.

Other weddings are so shrewd on the sofa, short and baffled, bassett-legged. All things knuckled, I have no winter left, in my sore rememory, to melt down for drinking water. Shrunk down. Your wedding slides the way wiry dark hairs do, down a swimming pool drain. So I am drained. Sincerely. I wish you every chapped bird on this pilgrimage to hold your hem up from the dust. Dust is plural: infinite dust. I will sink in the sun, I will crawl towards the heavy drawing and design the curtains in the room of never marrying you. Because it is a sinking, because today’s perfect weather is a later life’s smut. This soiled future unplans love. I keep unplanning the same Sunday. Leg and flower, breeze and terrier, I have no garden and couldn’t be happier. Please, don’t lose me here. I am sorry my clutch is all tendon and no discipline: the heart is a severed kind of muscle and alone. I can hear yours in your room. I hear mine in another room. In another’s.

Pillows & ribbons harness barefoot friends, haughty sisters & smiles; mothers watch, snoring. Dirty Jeep, broken January; darkness steals my grief. I cannot imagine something more fragile than marriage. You held my hand. We listened to the Callas arias on our porch. You kept rewinding the love song back to the beginning to the place where she saings,Certainly not today. Leaf shadows tent walls. My tongue traces tattoos & scars. Strange shirts mingle in the dryer. Tangled sand, uncomfortable legs, wasted days spent memorizing the body I'd soon share. Bride, bridge, bridle: all signs said, Don't wife her. I have learned how to hollow beginnings, rewind homes & wedding veils. Your drool, the doorknob, clumsy knots. Today the map is mortified. In bed, polka dots, miscarriage. Weather changes leaves, fragile-making. (not even divorcing in the eyes of the law:dissolving) I remember my sorrow at finding ants housed in my mother's peonies. When we moved, the new residents tore out all her flower beds, the strawberry patch & the treehouse. I drove you there to show you. You held my hand.

Today when persimmons ripen Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song Today when the maple sets down its red leaves Today when windows keep their promise to open Today when fire keeps its promise to warm Today when someone you love has died or someone you never met has died Today when someone you love has been born or someone you will not meet has been born Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace Today, let this light bless you With these friends let it bless you With snow-scent and lavender bless you Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days