Request + Tony Hoagland

[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

Request: My friend just got married, and she's having a difficult time with her new husband. I would love, love, LOVE your favorite poems about love/marriage being difficult, surviving bad times, hurting a lot, being real and not just fantasy. I'd be grateful!

Windchime
by Tony Hoagland

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in the morning
and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes
till death do us part,
but I can see what I would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go into the work boots
as she stands upon the ice chest;
the problem scrunched into her forehead;
the little kissable mouth
with the nail in it.

Comments

[jillianfish.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it really applies but it might remind your friend of why she chose her husband in the first place- try The Invitation by Oriah. A copy of it can be found on my user profile (it's too long to post as a comment!) or in the archives here.

[equality-72521.livejournal.com]

Habitation
Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire.

[bennybunny.livejournal.com]

Great poem, thank you for posting it.

Matthew Arnold, 'Dover Beach'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

by Matthew Arnold

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

by Pablo Neruda

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

"On Marriage"
Khalil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

"Chance Meeting"
Susan Browne

I know him, that man
walking- toward me up the crowded street
of the city, I have lived with him
seven years now, I know his fast stride,
his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust
deep in his jacket pockets, hands
that have known my body, touched
its softest part, caused its quick shudders
and slow releasings, I have seen his face
above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning
his eyes closed and opened, I have studied
his eyes, the brown turning gold at the centers,
I have silently watched him lying beside me
in the early morning, I know his loneliness,
like mine, human and sad,
but different, too, his private pain
and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes
closer, past trees and cars, trash and flowers,
steam rising from the manhole covers,
gutters running with rain, he lifts his head,
he sees me, we are strangers again,
and a rending music of desire and loss—
I don’t know him—courses through me,
and we kiss and say, It’s good to see you,
as if we haven’t seen each other in years
when it was just a few hours ago,
and we are shy, then, not knowing
what to say next.

"I Confess"
Alison Luterman

I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find
your serenity, do you know
how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess
some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis."
But we don’t request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair."

[orange-fell.livejournal.com]

The last poem is incomplete. Here it is in full:

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, "what aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know how
to be married for 50 years, or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess
some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis."
but we don't request these things from strangers
nowadays. So I said "I love your hair."

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I didn't realize I didn't copy the whole thing.

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

The Day
by Don Paterson

for Maureen and Gus

Life is no miracle. Its sparks flare up
invisibly across the night. The heart
kicks off again where any rock can cup
some heat and wet and hold it to its star.
We are not chosen, just too far apart
to know ourselves the commonplace we are,

as precious only as the gold in the sea:
nowhere and everywhere. So be assured
that even in our own small galaxy
there is another town whose today-light
won't reach a night of ours till Kirriemuir
is nothing but a vein of hematite

where right now, two -- say hairless, tall and dark,
but still as like ourselves as makes no odds --
push their wheeled contraptions through the park
under the red-leafed trees and the white birds.
Last week, while sceptic of their laws and gods
they made them witness to their given word.

They talk, as we do now, of the Divide;
but figure that who else should think of this
might also find some warmth there, and decide
to set apart one minute of the day
to dream across the parsecs, the abyss,
a kind of cosmic solidarity.

'But it's still so sad,' he says. 'Think: all of us
as cut off as the living from the dead.
It's the size that's all wrong here. The emptiness.'
She says, 'Well it's a miracle I found you
in all this space and dust.' He turns his head
and smiles the smile she recognized him through.

'I wasn't saying differently. It's just --
the biggest flashlight we could put together
is a match struck in the wind out here. We're lost.'
'I only meant -- there's no more we traverse
than the space between us. The sun up there's no farther.
We're each of us a separate universe.

We talk, make love, we sleep in the same bed --
but no matter what we do, you can't be me.
We only dream this place up in one head.'
'Thanks for that... You're saying that because
the bed's a light-year wide, or might as well be,
I'm even lonelier than I thought I was?'

'No... just that it's why we have this crap
of souls and gods and ghosts and afterlives.
Not to... bridge eternity. Just the gap' --
she measures it -- 'from here to here.' 'Tough call.
Death or voodoo. Some alternatives.'
'There's one more. That you trust me with it all.'

The wind is rising slowly through the trees;
the dark comes, and the first moon shows; they turn
their lighter talk to what daft ceremonies
the people of that star -- he points to ours --
might make, what songs and speeches they might learn,
how they might dress for it, their hats and flowers,

and what signs they exchange (as stars might do,
their signals meeting in the empty bands)
to say even in this nothingness I found you;
I was lucky in the timing of my birth.
They stare down at their own five-fingered hands
and the rings that look like nothing on that earth.

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Seven Happy Endings
by Li-Young Lee

Love, Love, Love, where are we now?
Where did we begin?
I think

one of us wanted to name this,
wanted to call it something!
Shadows on the Garden Wall.
A Man Rowing Alone Out to Sea.
A Song in Search of a Singer.

I think that was me, I wanted to call it something.
And you? You were happy
with a room, two rooms, and a door to divide them.
And daylight on either side of the door.
Borrowed music from an upstairs room.
And bells. Bells from down the street .
Bells to urge our salty hearts.

But I wanted to call it something.
I needed to know what we meant
when we said we, when we said
us, when we said this.

So call it Seven Happy Endings.
That would have been enough.

You see, I woke up one night
and realized I was falling.
I turned on the lamp and the lamp was falling.
And the hand that turned on the lamp was falling.
And the light was falling, and everything the light touched
falling. And you were falling
asleep beside me.
And that was the first happy ending.

And the last one?
it went something like this:

A child sat down, opened a book,
and began to read. And what he read out loud
came to pass. And what he kept to himself
stayed on the other side of the mountains.

But I promised seven happy endings.
I who know nothing about endings.
I who am always at the beginning of everything.
Even as our being together
always feels like beginning.
Not just the beginning of our knowing each other,
but the beginning of reality itself.

See how you and I
make this room so quiet with our presence.

With every word we say
the room grows quieter.

With every word we keep ourselves
from speaking, even quieter.

And now I don't know where we are.
Still needing to call it something:

A clock the bees unearth,
gathering the over-spilled minutes.

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Anti-Love Poem
by Grace Paley

Sometimes you don't want to love the person you love
you turn your face away from that face
whose eyes lips might make you give up anger
forget insult     steal sadness of not wanting
to love     turn away then turn away     at breakfast
in the evening     don't lift your eyes from the paper
to see that face in all its seriousness     a
sweetness of concentration     he holds his book
in his hand     the hard-knuckled winter wood-
scarred fingers     turn away     that's all you can
do     old as you are to save yourself     from love

The Ache of Marriage

[magneticsyntax.livejournal.com]

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.


-Denise Levertov