Living In Sin - Adrienne Rich

Another by Adrienne Rich (bio info with earlier).  I love the line "By evening she was back in love again / though not so wholly...."  and how true it is that even the separation of just the working hours gives pause enough for reflecting - deluding? - ourselves that the bastard/bitch is a saint - though slightly soiled (and more so each day).  Or why retired couples sometimes find that, without that daily apartness, all the sins are magnified, sometimes beyond repair.  Yet, it does wear thin, especially if the man is as obtuse and self-involved as this one.  One pulls for the woman (girl? she seems young) to truly wake and leave, though we know she won't....
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Living In Sin

She had thought the studio would keep itself –

No dust upon the furniture of love.

Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,

The panes relieved of grime.  A plate of pears,

A piano with a Persian shawl, a cat

Stalking the picturesque, amusing mouse

Had been her vision when he pleaded “Come.”

Not that, at five, each separate stair would writhe

Under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light

So coldly would delineate the scraps

Of last night’s cheese and blank, sepulchral bottles;

That on the kitchen shelf among the saucers

A pair of beetle eyes would fix her own –

Envoy from some black village in the moldings….

Meanwhile her night’s companion, with a yawn,

Sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,

Declared it out of tune, inspected, whistling,

A twelve hours’ beard, went out for cigarettes,

While she, contending with a woman’s demons,

Pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found

A fallen towel to dust the tabletop,

And wondered how it was a man could wake

From night to day and take the day for granted.

By evening she was back in love again,

Though not so wholly but throughout the night

She woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming

Lke a relentless milkman up the stairs.

                                                                               Adrienne Rich -  American

Contradictions: Tracking Poems - Adrienne Rich

My selection comes from Rich's work from the mid-1980s, when her reputation was more than solidified as a leading poet and a strong feminist (and lesbian) voice.  Born in 1929, she led a conventional life (husband, three kids) until the 1960s, when she found an adult voice ignited by the socio-political changes of that period.  (Crap, this is sounding like a college paper...)  I first encountered Rich in 1974 through her volume - Diving Into The Wreck - that won the National Book Award  that year.  She isn't known for her love poetry: her passion is for the "bigger" themes of her struggles to liberate herself (and women of her generation) from the restraints of male-dominated society, but such energy as is diverted to "Love" produced poems with heat.  (There is a volume called  Twenty One Love Poems that's worth the effort to find and read.)  I like this one for its compactness in painting a specific place and time, particularly the line "stopping to laugh at a joke", which says so much about the people and the relationship.
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3.

My mouth hovers across your breasts

in the short grey winter afternoon

in this bed        we are delicate

and tough        so hot with joy we amaze ourselves

tough        and delicate        we play rings

around each other        our daytime candle burns

with its peculiar light        and if the snow

beings to fall outside        filling the branches

and if the night falls        without announcement

these are the pleasures of winter

sudden, wild and delicate        your fingers

exact        my tongue exact at the same moment

stopping to laugh at a joke

my love         hot on your scent        on the cusp of winter     

                

                                                                                                   Adrienne Rich - American