55 Marriage poems

The gowns and dresses hang like fleece in their glaring whiteness, sheepskin-softness, the ruffled matrimonial love in which the brides- in-waiting dance around, expectantly, hummingbirds to tulips.   I was dragged here: David’s Bridal, off the concrete-gray arterial highways of a naval town.   I sink into the flush bachelors’ couch, along with other men sprinkled throughout the shop, as my friend and her female compatriots parade taffeta dresses in monstrous shades of pastels—persimmons, lilacs, periwinkles—the colors of weddings and religious holidays.   Trains drag on the floor, sleeves drape like limp, pressed sheets of candied fruits, ribbons fluttering like pale leaves.   I watch families gathered together: the women, like worshippers, circling around the smiling brides-to-be, as if they were the anointed ones.   The men, in turn, submerge deeper into couches, into sleep, while the haloed, veiled women cannot contain their joy, they flash their winning smiles, and they are beautiful.

God with honour hang your head, Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed With lissome scions, sweet scions, Out of hallowed bodies bred. Each be other’s comfort kind: Déep, déeper than divined, Divine charity, dear charity, Fast you ever, fast bind. Then let the March tread our ears: I to him turn with tears Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock, Déals tríumph and immortal years.

Forbear, bold youth, all’s Heaven here, And what you do aver, To others, courtship may appear, ’Tis sacriledge to her. She is a publick deity, And were’t not very odd She should depose her self to be A pretty household god? First make the sun in private shine, And bid the world adieu, That so he may his beams confine In complement to you. But if of that you do despair, Think how you did amiss, To strive to fix her beams which are More bright and large than this.

The ache of marriage: thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each It is leviathan and we in its belly looking for joy, some joy not to be known outside it two by two in the ark of the ache of it.

Being unwise enough to have married her I never knew when she was not acting. ‘I love you’ she would say; I heard the audiences Sigh. ‘I hate you’; I could never be sure They were still there. She was lovely. I Was only the looking-glass she made up in. I husbanded the rippling meadow Of her body. Their eyes grazed nightly upon it. Alone now on the brittle platform Of herself she is playing her last rôle. It is perfect. Never in all her career Was she so good. And yet the curtain Has fallen. My charmer, come out from behind It to take the applause. Look, I am clapping too.