Showing posts with label relationship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationship. Show all posts

8/26/21

MIDNIGHT - Louise Glück

Speak to me, aching heart: what

ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself

weeping in the dark garage

with your sack of garbage: it is not your job

to take out the garbage, it is your job

to empty the dishwasher. You are showing off again,

exactly as you did in childhood—where

is your sporting side, your famous

ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits

the broken window, a little summer moonlight, tender

murmurs from the earth with its ready sweetnesses—

is this the way you communicate

with your husband, not answering

when he calls, or is this the way the heart

behaves when it grieves: it wants to be

alone with the garbage? If I were you,

I’d think ahead. After fifteen years,

his voice could be getting tired; some night

if you don’t answer, someone else will answer.

3/23/19

A BIRD IN THE HAND: TWO SOLOS - Richard Shelton


Wife:               there was nothing wrong with our dreams
                        they fit us like scales on a fish

                        our dreams of patience and goodness
                        were not beyond our abilities
                        and our dreams of sex were harmless

                        there was nothing
                        wrong with our dreams except
                        they were the wrong dreams for us

                        now we see we had little choice
                        and once we had chosen each other
                        even that was taken away

Husband:         when I reached out with my right hand
                        and touched you
                        I knew everything had been planned
                        even what I am saying now
                        had been prepared
                        for me to say
           
                        and if I had reached out
                        with my left hand
                        at a different time on a different day
                        you would have been there
                        and everything would be the same

Wife:               coming of age
                        I found myself in the desert
                        following the wrong leader
                        but how could I have abandoned you
                        when I knew you would perish without me

                        so I said let it ride
                        and I rode with it
                        through a godforsaken land without trees
                        or flowers or anything beautiful
                        while the wind played my ribs like a harp

                        I don’t enjoy being laughed at
                        but I have learned
                        to practice a certain amount of madness
                        most difficult of the arts
                        and the least rewarding

Husband:         before we realized what they were
                        they were over 
                        those days when we lived
                        in furnished rooms and could laugh
                        at their ugliness

                        later
                        well on our way
                        and established in our own shambles
                        drinking good wines and eating good salads
                        we gave up bread and butter
                        and those private days those brief
                        beautiful days

                        gladly
                        as if we had a choice

Wife:               I keep busy all day
                        but when the sun goes down
                        I seem to go with it

                        once I walked out the door and entered night
                        because it was there
                        and because it promised everything
                        but what because of the promises
                        we didn’t live up to

                        only the young are aware of life
                        burning at their shoulders
                        only they know his touch

                        later it is all speculation
                        and empty phone booths
                        waiting for violent acts of love

                        I keep telling myself I will
                        feel better tomorrow
                        but I don’t believe it
                        there is always tomorrow night

Husband:         I saw you sleeping
                        knees bent to the right a little apart
                        head turned to the left
                        right arm at your side and left arm
                        above your head with your hand
                        caught in the wildness of your hair

                        until I saw you like that
                        I never understood why
                        there were so many paintings of nudes

Wife:               we are separate people
                        each what he fears most each his own
                        trap his own bait his own victim
                        I am not responsible for your life
                        and you are not responsible for mine

                        I wanted to get married
                        and you thought that meant I loved you

                        now you are going deaf and I pity you
                        how hard it must be for a man
                        who has been blind all these years

Husband:         there are others
                        who had all the advantages I had
                        and kept them
                        but deafness grows
                        on my family tree like a vine
                        choosing one limb and avoiding another

                        now that my ears
                        have started to go blind
                        I find myself among the chosen
                        and someday I will hear the true sound
                        of darkness

                        I have learned to expose my eyes
                        to the lips of strangers
                        and understand what they cannot say

                        living as I do
                        with my secrets unheard
                        and listening always with my eyes
                        how can I blame you
                        if you turn your face away

Wife:               all afternoon
                        your shadow your only child
                        grew taller
                       
                        now he is leaving and you will be alone
                        in the darkness that has been
                        and the darkness that is coming
                        the same darkness

                        bright moons in the blood move on
                        as water moves in the bed of a river
                        sleeping at night and waking
                        somewhere else

                        once I turned quickly and saw you
                        looking only at me

                        even if I could explain I wouldn’t
                        even if I could explain to you
                        I would oh I would

                        how any love story is a sad story
                        and we kiss ourselves goodby
                        each time we kiss each other

Husband:         those who have no children
                        become the children they were
                        and those who have several children
                        extend themselves like fingers
                        stretching into deep grass

                        but we have only one child
                        and both of us must crowd into his body
                        elbowing each other for space

Wife:               I remember
                        when this photograph was taken

                        the aperture opened on my life
                        as it was as it appeared to be
                        with the eyes of a deer on the wall
                        and a tongue which could tell
                        the truth
                        but the other was easier

                        my life created for me
                        and I like a fool accepted it
                        with its hand over its mouth
                        to hide the bleeding

                        waiting on the steps
                        of the front porch for years saying
                        you are young you will find somebody

                        my life with a life of its own
                        daring me to leave it
                        saying I am all I have it isn’t enough

Husband:         waiting is hardest but we have to wait
                        for the good things to come to us

                        I always have this next thing to do
                        while I am waiting
                        something important that needs to be done
                        a dog to be fed a plant to be watered
                       
                        I had two friends
                        one is gone the other is dead
                        now our son is grown up and no longer
                        needs me and you say I am the cause
                        of all your unhappiness

                        these things are true
                        but there is always this next
                        thing to do something important
                        that needs to be done while I am waiting

Wife:               ambition
                        worm in my bowels
                        the more I starve you the more you grow

                        others have killed their thousands
                        but you have killed your tens of thousands

                        I tell you
                        the stars can see only into the past
                        they do not know what I am doing
                        and do not care and the moon
                        which knows everything
                        cares even less

                        but you answer me with the story
                        about water always running away from home
                        and returning purified

Husband:         years ago I took this woman
                        you took this man
                        and we kept each other
                        but each of us still wants to be a victim
                        as if love were an accident
                        caused by carelessness
                        and we could hold one another responsible

                        in order to get what we need from each other
                        what have we traded except parts of our lives
                        huge parts of our lives

                        and what have we gained
                        except huge parts of each other’s lives
                        love always gives
                        more than we bargain for

Wife:               I heard a bird cry a name
                        and when I looked I found you
                        in the trap of my hand
                        crying a name I could not understand
                        your own or the name of someone you lost
                        it was never mine

                        I tried to find someone to love me
                        before it was too late
                        but there was no one

Husband:         I heard a bird call my name
                        but when I found the bird
                        it was you
                        caught in the trap of my hand
                        and what I heard was your pain
                        it has always been
                       
                        I tried to find a place
                        where I could not hear that sound
                        but there was no place

Wife:               I heard a bird cry a name
Husband:                     I heard a bird call my name
                        and when I looked
                                    it was you
                        in the trap of my hand
                                    what I heard was your pain
                        crying a name I could not understand
                                    it has always been
                        your own or the name of someone you lost
                                    it was never mine
                        I tried to find
                                    a place
                        someone to love me
                                    but there is no other place
                        there is no other one

9/27/18

The Fear of Oneself - Sharon Olds

As we get near the house, taking off our gloves,
the air forming a fine casing of
ice around each hand,
you say you believe I would hold up under torture
for the sake of our children. You say you think I have
courage. I lean against the door and weep,
the tears freezing on my cheeks with brittle
clicking sounds.
I think of the women standing naked
on the frozen river, the guards pouring
buckets of water over their bodies till they
glisten like trees in an ice storm.

I have never thought I could take it, not even
for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,
to stand between them and pain. But I come from a
long line
of women
who put themselves
first. I lean against the huge dark
cold door, my face glittering with
glare ice like a dangerous road,
and think about hot pokers, and goads,
and the skin of my children, the delicate, tight,
thin, top layer of it
covering their whole bodies, softly
glimmering.

7/30/16

Semi Semi Dash - Jillian Weise

The last time I saw Big Logos he was walking
to the Quantum Physics Store to buy magnets.
He told me his intentions. He was wearing

a jumpsuit with frayed cuffs. I thought the cuffs
got that way from him rubbing them against
his lips but he said they got that way

with age. We had two more blocks to walk.
“Once I do this, what are you going to do?”
he asked. “I wish you wouldn’t do it,” I said.

Big Logos bought the magnets and a crane
delivered them to his house. After he built
the 900-megahertz superconductor, I couldn’t go

to his house anymore because I have all kinds
of metal in my body. I think if you love someone,
you shouldn’t do that, build something like that,

on purpose, right in front of them.

3/3/16

Breakfast - Jacques Prévert (translation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

He put the coffee
In the cup
He put the milk
In the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
In the café au lait
With the coffee spoon
He stirred
He drank the café au lait
And he set down the cup
Without a word to me
He lit
A cigarette
He made smoke-rings
With the smoke
He put the ashes
In the ash-tray
Without a word to me
Without a look at me
He got up
He put
His hat upon his head
He put his raincoat on
Because it was raining
And he left
In the rain
Without a word
Without a look at me
And I       I took
My head in my hand
And I cried.

2/8/16

She Dotes - Edward Thomas

She dotes on what the wild birds say
Or hint or mock at, night and day, --
Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,
     And songless plover,
Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker.
They never say a word to her
     About her lover.

She laughs at them for childishness,
She cries at them for carelessness
Who see her going loverless
     Yet sing and chatter
Just as when he was not a ghost,
Nor ever ask her what she has lost
     Or what is the matter.

Yet she has fancied blackbirds hide
A secret, and that thrushes chide
Because she thinks death can divide
     Her from her lover:
And she has slept, trying to translate
The word the cuckoo cries to his mate
     Over and over.