Liz’s Weekend Poetry Series: True Love
by lizard
This weekend’s love poem comes from a collection by Sharon Olds, titled The Wellspring (Knopf, 1995).
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TRUE LOVE
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
—Sharon Olds
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February 11, 2012 at 4:51 pm
thanks for the poem. it’s beautifully quiet. reminds me of that old herman’s hermits song i loved as a kid: there’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight, all over the world people just like us are falling in love, so listen very carefully, closer now, and you will see what i mean, it isn’t a dream . . . the only sound that you will hear is when i whisper in your ear “i love you, forever and ever” . . . there’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight, all over the world people just like us are falling in love. hush, you silly lizard.
February 15, 2012 at 10:30 am
comment deleted. —lizard
February 15, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Did you write that Ingy? Or did you steal it?
February 15, 2012 at 5:19 pm
I’m not a big fan of misogyny put to verse, so I deleted it, but based on Ingy’s past poetic contributions, I think he’s probably competent enough to have actually composed that pile of rhyming crap.
February 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm
I copied this one.
Never take yourself too serious.
by jermaine
We live to die, be born, die, and live again
Each an expanding and contracting galaxy, racing from and toward Love
No freedom except in Love
All drawn of creation
All design of evolution
One,
or nothing at all.