I contract with limitation; I say
no and no then yes to you, and sign
—here, on the dotted line—
for whatever comes, I do: our time,
our outline, the filling-in of our details
(it's density that hurts, always,
not the original scheme). I'm here
for revision, discoloration; here to fade
and last, ineradicable, blue. Write me!
This ink lasts longer than I do.
MARK DOTY
A Love Poem
I do not expect the spirit of Penelope
To enter your breast, for I am not mighty
Or fearless. (Only our love is brave,
A rock against the wind.) I cry and cringe
When the cyclops peers into my cave.
I do not expect your letters to be lengthy
And of love, flowery and philosophic, for
Words are not our bond.
I need only the hard fact
Of your existence for my subsistence.
Our love is a rock against the wind,
Not soft like silk and lace.
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
The Hunkering
In October the red leaves going brown heap and scatter
over hayfield and dirt road, over garden and circular driveway,
and rise in a curl of wind dishevelled as schoolchildren
at recess, school just starting and summer done, winter's
white quiet beginning in ice on the windshield, in hard frost
that only blue asters survive, and in the long houses that once
more tighten themselves for darkness and hunker down.
DONALD HALL
An Early Afterlife
“…a wise man in time of peace, shall make the necessary preparations for war.”
—H
ORACE
Why don't we say goodbye right now
in the fallacy of perfect health
before whatever is going to happen
happens. We could perfect our parting,
like those characters in
On the Beach
who said farewell in the shadow
of the bomb as we sat watching,
young and holding hands at the movies.
We could use the loving words
we otherwise might not have time to say.
We could hold each other for hours
in a quintessential dress rehearsal.
Then we would just continue
for however many years were left.
The ragged things that are coming next—
arteries closing like rivers silting over,
or rampant cells stampeding us to the exit—
would be like postscripts to our lives
and wouldn't matter. And we would bask
in an early afterlife of ordinary days,
impervious to the inclement weather
already in our long-range forecast.
Nothing could touch us. We'd never
have to say goodbye again.
LINDA PASTAN
It Is Marvellous…
It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.
An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lightning struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;
And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one's back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
W
HEN
L
OVE
L
ULLS
M
onotony is the part of the love story that we don't get in film or fairy tales—it's the
what really does happen after happily ever after?
that we never see or read about. And, perhaps, it's the first time we are actually living happily ever after. When you hit monotony, you are no longer in the blissful state of believing that the two of you are one perfectly conjoined being; you are past playing house, so the romance of pots and pans and socks and his shaving gear all over the bathroom has begun to wear thin. It is no longer true that in his presence you forget “all time, all seasons.” But still, you think, you've got that solidity, that nothing-but-us-really-matters feeling—the existence of your love is a “hard fact” that steadies both of you. So why are you, at least every now and then, feeling vaguely bored or sunk in domestic routine or even dissatisfied?
Well, perhaps because you've found yourself in the middle of what Elizabeth Ash Vélez, in “Apex Plumbing,” calls “a married Saturday.” We all know what that means: Lowe's, Wal-Mart, dreary fluorescent lights, long lines of people grimly clutching dish drainers and two-by-fours. Wait, it's Saturday; aren't the two of you supposed to be at some cool new Haitian-Asian fusion place for brunch or maybe even spending the whole day in bed, too wildly in love to bother about getting dressed? Even more distressing, doe sn't “apex” suggest tha t you've reached the height, the summit of your love together?
And even though the goal is rehabilitation and restoration, a joint project (“we” measure the downstairs bath), the rows and rows of disembodied sinks at the store
do
seem sad, and when the clerk warns, “That apricot commode/Is forever,” we realize that
we're
in this forever as well—same lover, same house, same toilet. Even the “young man” hits a wrong note—if we perceive him as young, then that means that we're getting
old.
But the speaker in “Apex Plumbing” reassures us: Monotony is a necessary phase of life together. Yes, we'll have these feelings from time to time—hints of mortality and love are everywhere, hardware store included—but still this life together is our “heart's desire.” And even if the obstacles sometimes
feel
like concrete—hard as stone—creating a life together, making over a shared bathroom with bright new colors and shiny new tile, is what we've chosen, what we want.
Al Zolynas's “The Zen of Housework” suggests that if we pay close enough attention, even the never-ending monotony of housework can remind us that we have found our heart's desire, that there is beauty and romance in the most repetitious of household chores. Approach the dirty dishes like a Zen master, the speaker advises us: Be in the moment; don't think past the task at hand; become so conscious that you look over your own shoulder and see that the dirty dishwater fills a shining goblet like “the grey wine/of domesticity.”
But surely even a Zen master would choose a sexy, first-date glass of Merlot over that dingy “grey wine of domesticity.” And no one dreams of a happily-ever-after that involves hands “moiling among dinner dishes” (ugh, to moil means to churn about continuously, to toil, to slave)—so there is a suggestion of sadness, of dull duty. Still, the poem reminds us that there is pleasure in the routine maintenance of love. The droplets of steam that rise from the water are full of sunshine, moving like “a school of playful fish,” and making the mundane seem, indeed, sacred.
In “Lucy,” by Charlotte Matthews, the speaker, instead of watching herself do the dishes, watches her friend or neighbor as she goes about her daily chores. Again, we see the poetry and beauty of the ordinary: Lucy sweeps the dust into “perfect swirls” like the wings of a night moth. Of course, she does it so that snakes can't hide in the grass, but still, she's engrossed in the upkeep of her own little Eden—she hangs the newly white underwear, which she has boiled all day, in the brilliant July sun.
And maybe it's the
all-dayness
of these chores, the
constant
effort and vigilance it takes to keep things clean and new, that leads Lucy to advise the speaker that time will pass faster as she gets older, that she “won't want so much anymore.” The implication is that love will be lost amid the continuous cycle of dust and dirt and laundry, and nothing will matter too much. The speaker is chilled; she feels a coldness that she has never felt before in Lucy's Stepford wife–like, matter-of-fact tone.
We think that you will have these moments—moments when the mundane doesn't feel remotely sacred, moments when you lose sight of your heart's desire, moments when you are frightened that your new and wonderful bliss will be obliterated by the monotony of domestic routine. But these poems show that you can find new meaning in the familiar when you hold on to yourself and your love—when you understand that yes, Lucy's words are chilling, but you don't have to become Lucy. In fact, Lucy (or the miserable quarreling couple upstairs) can become your model of what
not
to be. No, you tell yourself, I will not lose what we have; I will focus on the sacrament of the mundane to make our love even stronger.
So, determined to define our domestic rituals with love and grace, we leave Lucy's sad house and return home to make,
oh, no, dinner
!!! Let's see, if it's just the two of us, it had better be delicious, candlelit, and sexy (chicken three times this week won't do). If we've got kids, someone must produce an appetizing but still healthy meal by 6:30 sharp every night, and it must be accompanied by substantive, open, loving discussions about drugs, condoms, and
values
, or those kids will flunk out of school and wind up on the streets (or at best, as in John A. Williams's “Kids,” not kill us in our sleep). And then, of course, there are dinner
parties
, where the table, food, and talk must be perfect.
In Louise Glück's very funny “Ceremony,” we see the strain involved in dinner with your heart's desire
every night of the week.
(Hint: Read the poem as a conversation, his stanzas aligned with the margin, hers indented.) You've made an effort—you've done some complicated dish involving artichokes and fennel, and really, the first words out of his mouth are that he no longer eats artichokes and
never
liked fennel. (Who can remember all of his likes and dislikes? Isn't this the same guy who is always complaining that you're stuck on a meat-and-potatoes menu and never make anything
different
?) And his criticism of dinner turns into a criticism of
you
in general. Why don't we ever have friends over? How come we have chicken every Monday and fish every Tuesday? And why don't we have any furniture?
You try weakly to defend yourself—hey, the great poet Wallace Stevens,
he
liked to stay close to hearth and home, but even so, he knew about pleasure. And like a knife in your heart, the spouse replies, “Yeah, maybe he knew about pleasure, but not
joy
,” meaning
you and me
, not much joy here. “Oh, and keep your damn artichokes—make them for yourself, not me.” Perhaps the blood is pounding in your head at this point, and you're wondering what happened to your plans to make dinner into a ceremony to celebrate your love. Instead, you remember only faintly “late night meals/cooked naked and drunk,” and “kisses bitten between bites” (from Kim Konopka's “I Want,” in Ecstasy).
Perhaps he's right; maybe it's just that the two of you are too much alone. You need some other people to break up the sameness, so you decide to have a dinner party. In Silvia Curbelo's “Garden Party,” the speaker has gone to great lengths to create beauty and order in domesticity—a table set outside, flowers carefully arranged, white tablecloth, cold soup, Brie—but nothing is working. The sky is only a “memory” of blue, the tulips are too “vague,” and the conversation is a pale drone. Worst of all, the source of this misery seems to be the good china (the china that the two of you picked out so lovingly at Pottery Barn, the china that was supposed to last forever along with your love) that “infects everything,” and becomes a metaphor that suggests that your life together is infected and diseased.
Only at the end of the poem does Curbelo suggest that there might be hope. In spite of the day's “final appearance,” the “falter[ing]” knife, the wine glass that “can't be saved” (all references to the doomed relationship), the napkin is “ravenous.” And with that single word, the poet suggests that hunger and desire are still alive. Lucy's prediction has not yet come true—we are not yet done with wanting.
Okay, so one dull dinner party does not destroy a relationship—maybe it's time to get out of the house entirely and accept one of those invitations so hilariously described in Philip Larkin's “Vers de Société”: “My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps/To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps/You'd care to join us?” Our speaker's first response? “In a pig's arse, friend.” But upon reflection, he decides that there is virtue and a certain comfort to the social network. We cannot exist without others—
no
two people can be everything to each other—and these social obligations are sometimes necessary, “like going to church,” to ease the boredom of life and love.
In Larry Vélez's “Appetizers,” with its Cheeveresque, slightly old-fashioned aura of split-levels and nylons, a last supper with the neighbors who have decided on a civilized, postmodern separation means facing the fact that
some
relationships end in failure, that some couples will rearrange the facts along with the furniture and eventually face the “dry rot” of divorce. But the speaker in “Appetizers,” in spite of the funeral song (that Mississippi threnody) he hears in all their hearts beneath the conversation of “school and sin and such,” is steadied by his wife and hears
anew
“the wildness rustle” of her nylons.
We think that's what most of the poems in Monotony tell us: Yes, you have begun to notice the slower, quieter pattern of your life together—there are fewer highs and lows than there were in Ecstasy—but somehow, even in the midst of messy renovation, daily routine, sullen kids, and boring dinner parties, uncertainty is only momentary. You continue to cling to your heart's desire, and the pleasure of love can still feel new.