But three days later, the balance of power has shifted. He's wiped the Cheez Whiz off his chin, and you see that he is kind to children, waitresses, and
yo u.
He doesn't leave h is dirty socks lying aro und; in fact, he cheerfully tidies up after you. He
is
your Rhett. So, finally past your bout of uncertainty, like the speaker in Rumi's shocking little poem “Last Night You Left Me and Slept,” you are ready to talk and be intimate in bed again; you turn to him and tell him that you'll be together “till the universe dissolves,” but he just mumbles something drunkenly and goes to sleep.
And before you know it, he's got ALL the control in the relationship. In Anna Akhmatova's “I Wrung My Hands Under My Dark Veil,” power shifts from one lover to the other in just three short stanzas. The speaker drives the lover away, makes him “drunk with an astringent sadness,” and two lines later, she's running after him, desperate to get him back. “I meant it all in fun,” she shouts; “Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain.”
But perhaps she (you) has gone too far this time. (He
saw
the look you gave him while he was watching the Stooges.) The lover in the poem is calm, not even passionately angry; he just smiles and tells her to get out of the rain (echo of Rhett Butler's famous “Frankly I don't give a damn”).
In Sam Holtzapple's “Terminal,” the speaker is powerless. He is consumed with anxiety and insecurity; he's terrified that his lover has moved on, that he is but a connecting stop—she is on her way somewhere else, perhaps to a new lover. Whoever is on the downside of the teeter-totter imagines the worst—like the lover in Carolyn Creedon's “Just a Sestina…,” who, of course, has her own doubts and imagines him rubbing
your
back while you imagine the new intimacy that he has found with her. The insecure one always feels “dishless and cold,” waiting for the lover to return and make things perfect again, hoping to be the way you
were
(like ugly duckling Barbra Streisand waiting for the golden Robert Redford in
The Way We Were
).
But guess what? “Surprise!” says Dorothy Parker. Here comes one more power shift: How could you ever imagine that he didn't love you? In fact, you see that trusting-doggie look in his eyes again, and, far from feeling your “heart fluttering with fear” that he should leave
you
, you're no longer sure that you want to be with
him.
The speaker in “Surprise” suggests that it is love's unvarying law that “one shall weep and one shall stray.” Add to that Marcel Proust's dictum that “we love only what we do not possess,” and we can see that yes, the back-and-forth of insecurity is part of any relationship, at least some of the time.
And if you can hold on through all this tottering back and forth, you may well come to the speaker's place in Eleanor Stanford's “On a Line by Petrarch.” She suggests that the language of love is not always fluent, that we may stumble over the right word or gesture, that “September leaves us shadows but no light.” But still, by the end of the poem, the speaker regains balance: “
What I once loved I now love less./
But no; not light; not watching you, undressed.”
Uncertainty in love is momentary and probably necessary, we believe. As Mark McMorris suggests in “Elegy for Love,” a loving relationship will move from “honey-eyed” bliss to shadow and back to “bright afternoons of elms.” So don't get stuck on one bad night, your dysfunctional-family history, or the occasional power shifts between the two of you. Understand that a love worth keeping is not static, and that we can leave uncertainty and return to stability. In fact, we can move from shadow to light, from loving less to loving
more.
In Former Days We'd Both Agree
In former days we'd both agree
That you were me, and I was you.
What has now happened to us two,
That you are you, and I am me?
BHARTRHARI (T
RANS
. J
OHN
B
ROUGH
)
Talking in Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
PHILIP LARKIN
Girls
You girls who were seeking
the great love, the great and terrible love,
what has happened, girls?
Perhaps
time, time!
Because now,
here it is, see how it passes
dragging the heavenly stones,
destroying flowers and leaves,
with a noise of foam lashed
against all the stones of your world,
with a smell of sperm and jasmine,
next to the bleeding moon!
And now
you touch the water with your little feet,
with your little heart
and you do not know what to do!
Better are
certain night journeys,
certain compartments,
certain most amusing walks,
certain dances with no greater consequence
than to continue the journey!
Die of fear or of cold,
or of doubt,
for I with my huge steps
will find her,
within you
or far from you,
and she will find me,
she who will not tremble in the face of love,
she who will be fused
with me
in life or death!
PABLO NERUDA (T
RANS
. D
ONALD
D. W
ALSH
)
Because my mother and father…
Because my mother and father
hurt each other
I will abandon you
sooner or later
somebody will learn
from the experience
that imitation
has nothing to do
with flattery.
KATE BINGHAM
Nantucket
Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—
Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray
a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which
a key is lying—And the
immaculate white bed
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Biscuit
The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.
I can't bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.
JANE KENYON
Last Night You Left Me and Slept
Last night you left me and slept
your own deep sleep. Tonight you turn
and turn. I say,
“You and I will be together
till the universe dissolves.”
You mumble back things you thought of
when you were drunk.
RUMI (T
RANS
. C
OLEMAN
B
ARKS
)
I Wrung My Hands Under My Dark Veil
I wrung my hands under my dark veil…
“Why are you pale; what makes you reckless?”
—Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.
I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate…
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.
And shouted, choking: “I meant it all
in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain.”
He smiled at me—oh so calmly, terribly—
and said: “Why don't you get out of the rain?”
ANNA AKHMATOVA (T
RANS
. M
AX
H
AYWARD AND
S
TANLEY
K
UNITZ
)
Terminal
after the all too usual delays—
crowded runway at LGA
thunderstorms over ORD—
you arrive here at MEE and
I get the feeling
I get the feeling yet again
that I am but a connecting stop
a hub
some CLT or ATL or PIT
you travel through
not to
pausing only to change planes and
marking the time of your layover
the weirdly dislocated hour(s)
marking—not spending—it
pacing my concourse
skimming my newsstands
bypassing my gift shops
so anxious for your connection to
some SFO or HNL or PAR
a final destination
which is and always has been
somewhere someone else
SAM HOLTZAPPLE
Just a Sestina to You, Honey, Letting You Know What an Interesting Thing Happened to Me While You Were at Home Rubbing Your Wife's Back
A martian fell out of the french windows into my bed last night
He wasn't much different from you, honey, except the
hair in his nose was green not brown and
in his left hand he clutched a nine inch satellite dish
(that's a little bigger honey than the one you clutch)—any
way he apologized for dropping in like that—I asked him to stay
you know, chat for a while—life, love, lipstick—so he did stay
actually he ended up spending the night
(in case you're wondering honey, no, he didn't get any)
we just sat around thumbwrestling and well the
night was getting hot so I got us a dish
of butter pecan ice cream—he really lapped it up
like a native, honey, and
then as we played a rousing game of Twister on my deck, he looked up and
noticed that the Christmas lights were still up, in March. They stay
up (I said) because I've got a married lover (that's you, my little dish)
so every day is Christmas, hooray! (honey I didn't say how every night
is Easter how you've crucified me baby) I could see he liked me, the
dish he held, he clutched a little harder and asked if there were any
chance for his little old martian self to experience any
Earthly love. I have some single friends (I replied) and
they're pretty desperate (not like me honey) the
chances are good they wouldn't kick you out of bed—stay
with one of them and pretty soon one night
you'll get to try out that nine inch satellite dish
in a way you haven't thought of; not many women get nine inches of dish
(I told him), matter of fact some women don't get any.
(that's where I'm lucky, right honey?) The hot night
grew cold, so we stopped hanging by our ankles from the deck and
came in and then I saw his suitcases (there, by the bed) You can't stay
(I said) My married lover could be by to see me any month now and the
place has to be empty. I might not even be here (I said) but the
(I was JUST KIDDING, honey) martian got huffy, packed up his dish,
asked politely to use my phone to call a cab, said he wouldn't dream of stay
ing and messing up my affairs. I asked the martian if there were any
thing else he wanted to know. Yes he said, How is life here on lovely Earth and
I said Wake up—it sucks! Take me away, into the night
(I said) but by then it was morning the sun was mooning us so any
way he left (alone) (taking his nine inch dish) and I sat in my kitchen and
poached some eggs. Why didn't I go with him, why do I stay (but honey here I
am, dishless and cold, waiting for you to come any day any night)
CAROLYN CREEDON
Surprise
My heart went fluttering with fear
Lest you should go, and leave me here
To beat my breast and rock my head
And stretch me sleepless on my bed.
Ah, clear they see and true they say
That one shall weep, and one shall stray
For such is Love's unvarying law
…I never thought, I never saw
That I should be the first to go;
How pleasant that it happened so!
DOROTHY PARKER
On a Line by Petrarch
What I once loved I now love less.
September leaves us shadows
but no light. I watch you undress,
your body edged in darkness.
Miles on the stereo, those notes
that I once loved, and now love less—
the glint of anger they suppress
turns a kind of airless blue,
admits no light. I watch you undress
your gestures of significance,
and leave me at a loss to know
what I once loved. I now love less
than fluently, am forced to guess
at curve of neck and arch of brow.
But not at light. I watch you without redress
to sound or sense. The needle lifts
at last from the refrain, its echo:
What I once loved I now love less.
But no; not light; not watching you, undressed.
ELEANOR STANFORD
Elegy for Love
We have passed through bodies
into a bright afternoon of elms
poured over the budding limbs
honey-eyed until blind from the sun
which stayed before us
and darkened the coming minutes.
MARK MCMORRIS
W
HEN
L
OVE
S
TINKS
M
isery makes uncertainty look good. Uncertainty was temporary—an alienated evening or two, a few days of watching him defer to his mother, a leaden dinner party—but ultimately you knew that love was intact and would return. Misery feels never-ending—days, weeks (or even months), of avoiding his eyes and touch. You may know what the problem is: You're simply too stressed from work and kids and endless chores to make time for each other; or perhaps you suspect an affair or are contemplating one yourself. Even worse, you
don't know
why your great love has turned to the sad and uncomfortable encounters with a stranger described so chillingly in János Pilinszky's “Relationship.”