Ripening

Thomas Hart Benton

The Lord is My Shepard

Ripening

The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now
who are dead! We, who were young,
now count the cost of having been.
And yet as we know the dead
we grow familiar with the world.
We, who were young and loved each other
ignorantly, now come to know
each other in love, married
by what we have done, as much
as by what we intend. Our hair
turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!

~ Wendell Berry ~

Call It a Good Marriage

Fairfield Porter

Iced Coffee

Call It a Good Marriage

Call it a good marriage -

For no one ever questioned

Her warmth, his masculinity,

Their interlocking views;

Except one stray graphologist

Who frowned in speculation

At her h's and her s's,

His p's and w's.

Though few would still subscribe

To the monogamic axiom

That strife below the hip-bones

Need not estrange the heart,

Call it a good marriage:

More drew those two together,

Despite a lack of children,

Than pulled them apart.

Call it a good marriage:

They never fought in public,

They acted circumspectly

And faced the world with pride;

Thus the hazards of their love-bed

Were none of our damned business -

Till as jurymen we sat on

Two deaths by suicide.

~ Robert Graves ~

Maybe

Edward Hopper

Summer Evening

Maybe

Maybe he believes me, maybe not.
Maybe I can marry him, maybe not.

Maybe the wind on the prairie,
The wind on the sea, maybe,
Somebody, somewhere, maybe can tell.

I will lay my head on his shoulder
And when he asks me I will say yes,
Maybe.

~ Carl Sandburg ~

Decade

Stone Roberts

Portrait of a Marraige

Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,

And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Now you are like morning bread,

Smooth and pleasant.

I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,

But I am completely nourished.

~ Amy Lowell ~

The First Day

Mary Cassat

The Boating Party

The First Day

I wish I could remember the first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me;

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or winter for aught I can say.

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it! Such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!

~ Christina Rossetti ~

A Word to Husbands

Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles de Avignon

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

Whenever you’re right, shut up.

~ Ogden Nash ~

To My Dear and Loving Husband

Thomas Sully

Daniel La Motte

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompence.

Thy love is such I can no way repay.

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let's so persever

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

~ Anne Bradstreet ~

Wan Chu's Wife In Bed

Georges Braque

Large Nude

Wan Chu's Wife In Bed

Wan Chu, my adoring husband,

has returned from another trip

selling trinkets in the provinces.

He pulls off his lavender shirt

as I lie naked in our bed,

waiting for him. He tells me

I am the only woman he'll ever love.

He may wander from one side of China

to the other, but his heart

will always stay with me.

His face glows in the lamplight

with the sincerity of a boy

when I lower the satin sheet

to let him see my breasts.

Outside, it begins to rain

on the cherry trees

he planted with our son,

and when he enters me with a sigh,

the storm begins in earnest,

shaking our little house.

Afterwards, I stroke his back

until he falls asleep.

I'd love to stay awake all night

listening to the rain,

but I should sleep, too.

Tomorrow Wan Chu will be

a hundred miles away

and I will be awake all night

in the arms of Wang Chen,

the tailor from Ming Pao,

the tiny village down the river.

~ Richard Jones ~

The Farmer’s Wife

Vija Celmins

Gun with Hand

The Farmer’s Wife

From the hodge porridge

of their country lust,

their local life in Illinois,

where all their acres look

like a sprouting broom factory,

they name just ten years now

that she has been his habit;

as again tonight he'll say

honey bunch let's go

and she will not say how there

must be more to living

than this brief bright bridge

of the raucous bed or even

the slow braille touch of him

like a heavy god grown light,

that old pantomime of love

that she wants although

it leaves her still alone,

built back again at last,

mind's apart from him, living

her own self in her own words

and hating the sweat of the house

they keep when they finally lie

each in separate dreams

and then how she watches him,

still strong in the blowzy bag

of his usual sleep while

her young years bungle past

their same marriage bed

and she wishes him cripple, or poet,

or even lonely, or sometimes,

better, my lover, dead.

~ Anne Sexton ~

?

Edvard Munch

Red and White

?

If you had the choice of two women to wed,

(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)

And the first from her heels to her dainty head

Was charming in every sense of the word:

And yet in the past (I grieve to state),

She never had been exactly "straight".

And the second -- she was beyond all cavil,

A model of virtue, I must confess;

And yet, alas! she was dull as the devil,

And rather a dowd in the way of dress;

Though what she was lacking in wit and beauty,

She more than made up for in "sense of duty".

Now, suppose you must wed, and make no blunder,

And either would love you, and let you win her --

Which of the two would you choose, I wonder,

The stolid saint or the sparkling sinner?

~ Robert William Service ~

Ballad of the Despairing Husband

Jean-Antoine Watteau

Mezzetin

Ballad of the Despairing Husband

My wife and I lived all alone,

contention was our only bone.

I fought with her, she fought with me,

and things went on right merrily.

But now I live here by myself

with hardly a damn thing on the shelf,

and pass my days with little cheer

since I have parted from my dear.

Oh come home soon, I write to her.

Go fuck yourself, is her answer.

Now what is that, for Christian word?

I hope she feeds on dried goose turd.

But still I love her, yes I do.

I love her and the children too.

I only think it fit that she

should quickly come right back to me.

Ah no, she says, and she is tough,

and smacks me down with her rebuff.

Ah no, she says, I will not come

after the bloody things you've done.

Oh wife, oh wife -- I tell you true,

I never loved no one but you.

I never will, it cannot be

another woman is for me.

That may be right, she will say then,

but as for me, there's other men.

And I will tell you I propose

to catch them firmly by the nose.

And I will wear what dresses I choose!

And I will dance, and what's to lose!

I'm free of you, you little prick,

and I'm the one to make it stick.

Was this the darling I did love?

Was this that mercy from above

did open violets in the spring --

and made my own worn self to sing?

She was. I know. And she is still,

and if I love her? then so I will.

And I will tell her, and tell her right . . .

Oh lovely lady, morning or evening or afternoon.

Oh lovely lady, eating with or without a spoon.

Oh most lovely lady, whether dressed or undressed or partly.

Oh most lovely lady, getting up or going to bed or sitting only.

Oh loveliest of ladies, than whom none is more fair, more gracious, more beautiful.

Oh loveliest of ladies, whether you are just or unjust, merciful, indifferent, or cruel.

Oh most loveliest of ladies, doing whatever, seeing whatever, being whatever.

Oh most loveliest of ladies, in rain, in shine, in any weather.

Oh lady, grant me time,

please, to finish my rhyme.

~ Robert Creely ~

The Bean Eaters

Alice Neel

The Soyer Brothers

The Bean Eaters

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair,

Dinner is a casual affair.

Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,

Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.

Two who have lived their day,

But keep on putting on their clothes

And putting things away.

And remembering...

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room

that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and

cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

~ Gwendolyne Brooks ~