She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (6 page)

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

The last thing of you is a doll, velveteen and spangle,

silk douponi trousers, Ali Baba slippers that curl up at the toes,

tinsel moustache, a doll we had made in your image

for our wedding with one of me which you have.

They sat atop our coconut cake. We cut it

into snowy squares and fed each other, while God watched.

All other things are gone now: the letters boxed,

pajama-sized shirts bagged for Goodwill, odd utensils

farmed to graduating students starting first apartments

(citrus zester, apple corer, rusting mandoline),

childhood pictures returned to your mother,

trinkets sorted real from fake and molten

to a single bar of gold, untruths parsed,

most things unsnarled, the rest let go

save the doll, which I find in a closet,

examine closely, then set into a hospitable tree

which I drive past daily for weeks and see it still there,

in the rain, in the wind, fading in the sun,

no one will take it, it will not blow away,

in the rain, in the wind,

it holds tight to its branch,

then one day, it is gone.

G
ETTING MARRIED WAS THE BEST DECISION
I have ever made. Not only is my husband the most wonderful person imaginable, but at the time, it was such a relief to have it all over with! Even though I was a first-year law student determined to concentrate on my professional options, getting married took over my life. To be honest, it had always been a major preoccupation for me, my friends and cousins. We spent countless childhood hours planning imaginary weddings. Would we elope? Could we bring our ponies? What would our bridesmaids wear, especially if they were on their ponies. When I hit my twenties and people started getting married for real, weekends were consumed with bridal showers—complete with skits, songs, and the occasional stripper. There were endless fittings for hideous dresses, but also lots of laughs and backstage drama. My wedding was no exception. Fortunately, I had a fantastic time, and life has only gotten better because I have someone to share it with.

Each marriage is as unique as the two people in it, but universal too. Getting married is an act of hope and optimism—an affirmation of life. Every marriage, like every life, goes through its ups and downs, and the institution of marriage is challenged by personal and historical inequities. Yet the pursuit of love and the strength of a lifelong commitment remain their own rewards and the foundation of much of our social order.

Most of these poems are romantic, realistic, wise, and funny. It's hard not to be swept off one's feet reading Christopher Marlowe's poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” The romantic ideal underlying marriage is embodied by the excerpt from
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
by Sir Philip Sidney. Its most famous line, “My true love hath my heart and I have his,” is echoed by e. e. cummings four hundred years later when he writes, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in/my heart).”

I have tried to include poems that examine different aspects of the marital relationship. Comparing a passage from the Book of Proverbs about the virtuous wife to Lady Mary Chudleigh's warning in “To the Ladies” gives us a historical perspective on the relative status of husbands and wives. Not surprisingly, women come up short. There are also grim, loveless depictions like Robert Lowell's “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage.” Even more chilling is Robert Browning's classic “My Last Duchess,” in which the fact that the husband has murdered his wife is gradually revealed.

At least Ogden Nash and Rudyard Kipling bring a little levity to the subject. In “A Word to Husbands” and “The Female of the Species,” they complain loudly that women dominate the home and everyone who enters it. An excerpt from John Milton's
Paradise Lost
takes us back to the beginning of the “vain contest” between husband and wife, which he describes as a struggle that shall have no end.

Fortunately, however, most poems about marriage celebrate companionship, passion, and the oneness of two people in a long-term partnership. “Letter from My Wife” is one of many poems written from prison by Nazim Hikmet, a Turkish poet jailed for his political activities. Filled with longing and the desire to be reunited before death, these poems make the reader's heart ache. Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin's poem “To Paula in Late Spring” reflects on the memories of a lifetime of love.

Even though each marriage remains unique and mysterious, these poems underscore how and why getting married remains such a powerful personal and societal ideal.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May morning.

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

GREGORY CORSO

Should I get married? Should I be good?

Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?

Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries

tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets

then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries

and she going just so far and I understanding why

not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!

Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone

and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky—

When she introduces me to her parents

back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,

should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa

and not ask Where's the bathroom?

How else to feel other than I am,

often thinking Flash Gordon soap—

O how terrible it must be for a young man

seated before a family and the family thinking

We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!

After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?

Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter

but we're gaining a son—

And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends

and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded

just wait to get at the drinks and food—

And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated

asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?

And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!

I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back

She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!

And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going

on—

Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes

Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers!

Chocolates!

All streaming into cozy hotels

All going to do the same thing tonight

The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen

The lobby zombies they knowing what

The whistling elevator man he knowing

The winking bellboy knowing

Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!

Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!

Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!

running rampant into those almost climactic suites

yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!

O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls

I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner

devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy

a saint of divorce—

But I should get married I should be good

How nice it'd be to come home to her

and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen

aproned young and lovely wanting my baby

and so happy about me she burns the roast beef

and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair

saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!

God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!

So much to do! like sneaking into Mr. Jones' house late at night

and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books

Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower

like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence

like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest

grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!

And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him

When are you going to stop people killing whales!

And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle

Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust—

Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow

and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,

up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,

finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man

knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin

soup—

O what would that be like!

Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus

For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records

Tack Della Francesca all over its crib

Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib

And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father

not rural not snow no quiet window

but hot smelly tight New York City

seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls

a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!

And five nose running brats in love with Batman

And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired

like those hag masses of the 18th century

all wanting to come in and watch TV

The landlord wants his rent

Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus

Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking—

No! I should not get married I should never get married!

But—imagine If I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman

tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves

holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other

and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window

from which we could see all of New York and ever farther on

clearer days

No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream—

O but what about love? I forget love

not that I am incapable of love

it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes—

I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother

And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible

And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married

And I don't like men and—

but there's got to be somebody!

Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,

all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear

and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible

then marriage would be possible—

Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover

so I wait—bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

I cherish his, because in me it bides.

His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;

My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;

For as from me on him his hurt did light,

So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart;

Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)