Sex Without Love

[fiftyfour.livejournal.com]

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
Gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth, whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

-- sharon olds


just a note on this poem: today a lovely someone &i had a conversation that lasted more than two hours on this poem. we took apart each sentence and each line and each image and allusion. we found so much hidden and the result was ultimately beautiful. to be with someone with such an appreciation for poetry. and we laughed, a lot, because it's hip to be a dork <3

Comments

[ex-myst341.livejournal.com]

I first saw this one back in '96. I still love it... great poem!

[fiftyfour.livejournal.com]

we read it in ap english; today we had an in class writing on it and i wrote six pages in forty minutes... it was interesting to talk to people about their interpretation of the poem too because people had such diverse opinions.

ilovepoetry <3

xo.