[Petra Norr]

Craig Raine's poem immediately jumps to mind. I really like it, and it always moves me when I get to the end:


The Onion, Memory

Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears -
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust - the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin - without palaver.
All's over in a flash,
too silently...

Tonight the arum lilies fold
back napkins monogrammed in gold,
crisp and laundered fresh.
Those crustaceous gladioli, on the sly,
reveal the crimson flower-flesh
inside their emerald armor plate.
The uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye.
The candles palpitate.
The Oistrakhs bow and scrape
in evening dress, on Emi-tape.

Outside the trees are bending over backwards
to please the wind: the shining sword
grass flattens on its belly.
The white-thorn's frillies offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly
strives to keep a sense of balance.

I slice up the onions. You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo - flesh -
white muscle on white muscle,
intimately folded skin,
finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.

Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase -
while we, together and apart,
repeat unfinished gestures got by heart.

And afterwards, I blunder with the washing on the line -
headless torsos, faceless lovers, friends of mine.
.
.

[Janice D. Soderling]

This was off to a flying start!

Petra, that was a terrific poem and I hadn't seen it. Thanks for posting.

And Julie Kane's poem is that rare thing--memorable. It will pop up in my mind at intervals in future days, I don't doubt it.

And W. D. Snodgrass to be brought to the fore--the poets of his day were important to me, a couple of small anthologies kept me in touch with poetry when I lived in an obscurey foreign village with three children under the age of four and not a library or bookstore with English books for miles and miles and miles.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

And W. D. Snodgrass to be brought to the fore--

Heart's Needle is the great one of the century, but I'll leave that to Chris. Berryman has some, but everyone will think of those.

So let's go to Dryden:

Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

If I have pleasures for a friend,
And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
Or that I should bar him of another:
For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
When neither can hinder the other.


Thanks,

Bill

[Susan McLean]

Not Going to See the Movie About a Nuclear Holocaust's Aftermath
by Philip Dacey

Here. In the way
I turned away from my wife
is all the horror
I need to consider.

A great white light
blinded me
and I wandered for years
in a desert.

I would tell you how
eventually
the green place
came to meet me,

but that would be a lie.
This poem
is radioactive.
I am sorry.

[Gregory Dowling]

There's George Meredith's sonnet sequence about the failure of a marriage, Modern Love. Here are the first and last of the sequence (they are 16-line sonnets, by the way):

1.
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

50.
Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers:
But they fed not on the advancing hours:
Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.
Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! --
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin line upon the shore!